


a novel christmas

by drunkonyou



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Christmas, Established Ray Toro/Mikey Way, Fluff and Angst, Inspired by Hallmark Christmas Movies, M/M, copious amounts of hot chocolate is consumed, what’s the opposite of a meet-cute?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28940865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drunkonyou/pseuds/drunkonyou
Summary: When Frank thought about what it would be like to meet G.A. Way, he definitely didn’t imagine it to go likethat.Ray invites Mikey’s estranged brother to Christmas, and because the universe has a sense of humor, he just so happens to be Frank’s favorite author.
Relationships: Frank Iero/Gerard Way, Ray Toro/Mikey Way
Comments: 23
Kudos: 95





	a novel christmas

**Author's Note:**

> back again with a fic i wanted to have posted by christmas! oh well! please enjoy this cheese ball :)

Ray, like the curly-haired divine intervention he is (and like something out of _Friends_ since they literally live right across the hall from each other), shows up just when Frank is about to lose his marbles all over the living room floor. He’s spent the better half of the morning staring at his computer screen, periodically hunt-and-peck typing and jabbing the backspace button into his keyboard and getting exactly nothing done. Which seems to be the norm lately. Really, he blames it on the fact that he just turned thirty.

“It’s not because of that,” Ray tells him when he’s let in, not for the first time, and drops a Panera Bread bag on the table that sits adjacent to the kitchenette. “It’s called writer’s block. Even I know that and I can barely send a text without making a typo.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Frank shoves his hands into the warm paper bag and starts taking the food out, his stomach growling because he skipped breakfast and it’s—he looks at the clock nailed above the sink—almost one. Jesus, he’s been up since _dawn._ Ray hovers on the other side of what they call the kitchen table awkwardly, squeezing the back of the chair there until his knuckles go white. Frank squints at his hands once all the food is set out, the two sandwiches, the two cups of soup, the chips— “Wait,” he says slowly, looking back at the empty bag. “You only get Panera when we’re celebrating something.”

He looks up at Ray’s face and squints, and Ray goes redder than the tinsel he made Frank string up around the apartment last week because _“You have to have_ some _decorations, Frankie.”_ He clenches his fists around the back of the chair one more time and lets go. “Uh.”

“Raymond Toro, what did you do.” But as he says it, he thinks he knows, and his heart starts jackhammering against his ribcage excitedly. _Did he finally…?_

Ray giggles nervously like he’s a prepubescent girl and not a grown-ass man and slams down a black ring box on the table. He gestures at it weakly. “That.”

Frank has been prepared for this since he met Ray and Mikey, but he still finds himself being surprised and saying thinly, “Oh shit.”

Ray giggles again and snatches the ring up like Mikey’s liable to walk through the door any minute—which, he might be—and stuffs it back into the pocket of his jeans so deep Frank’s afraid he’s gonna tear a hole and it’s going to slide right down his leg. “I just— I was at the mall picking up some more presents, right, and I walked by this jewelry store and,” he shrugs, all loose and dopey and so happy, “it just felt right. You know?” He’s giving off such _warmth_ Frank wouldn’t be surprised if the frost on the windows started melting.

 _Christmas presents._ He knew he was forgetting something.

Frank pulls him in by the shoulder and gives him the biggest bear hug he can muster, even swallowing his pride and getting up on his tiptoes to reach better. “Congrats, man. Seriously. It’s about damn time.”

“Wait—” Ray pulls back, his sweaty hands still on Frank’s waist. “We’ve only been dating for a year and a half.”

With one last hearty slap, Frank steps away and drops himself into one of his creaky kitchen chairs. “Please, I knew this was coming the moment we met Mikey and you spilled your drink all over him,” he says, and reaches for the sandwich and soup he knows are his. “Thanks for this, by the way. I’d probably starve if it weren’t for you.”

Ray simpers a little and sits down too. He pushes the empty Panera bag out of the way so he can see Frank across the table. Suddenly his eyes go wide. “Wait— Should I have waited longer? Is a year and a half not long enough to be dating? Or should I have done this sooner?”

“Ray,” Frank laughs as he unwraps his sandwich. “The two of you were literally talking about who sells the nicest tuxes last week. You’re not getting cold feet _now,_ are you?”

“I bought the ring at the mall! Maybe I should have cold feet.” He props his elbows on the table and puts his face in his hands. “What am I doing. The holidays are stressful enough as it is.”

Frank plucks a fallen avocado from his wrapper and pops it in his mouth, letting Ray stew for a couple of seconds while he chews. “Dude,” he says when he starts tugging on his hair. “This apartment hit its stress limit like three hours ago, so chill. Listen to me.” Ray removes his face from his hands and he looks so needlessly miserable that it almost makes Frank laugh. “You’re acting like Mikey’s gonna say no.” Ray looks terrified at that and Frank says before he can work himself up any more, “He _won’t._ Don’t make me kick you out, you know I don’t like stupid people. It messes with my ability to write.”

Which is a lie, considering his ability to write has pretty much been nonexistent for months now. Maybe he’s the stupid one?

Ray finally laughs, and all the ridiculous tension melts like snow on warm pavement. He takes a bite of his sandwich. “Sorry. I’m sorry, I’m just a worrier, you know that.”

“Do I ever. Holy shit, Toro, you can make a man second guess whether or not he’s got his shoes on the right feet.” He rips off some of his stale bread with his teeth. “So when are you gonna do it? It’s gonna be cheesy and cliché, right?”

Ray wipes his mouth on a napkin. He’s still a little rosy in the face, but Frank is sure he’ll look like that until after the honeymoon, at least. He tends to wear his heart on his cheeks like a rouge. “Christmas.”

Frank pumps his fists in the air. _“Perfect._ Oh, Mikey’s gonna hate that. Are you having Christmas at your parents’ this year?”

Ray frowns as he spoons soup into his mouth. “What do you mean _you?_ You’re coming, aren’t you?”

Frank glances at his computer sitting on the couch and sighs. “I don’t know. Brian needs that pitch from me by New Years and I’ve got, like, nothing. I was gonna sit it out this year.”

“Dude, you can’t sit out _Christmas._ Come on, Mom and Dad are letting me have the cottage this year. I’m finally hosting so you have to come. And also I need the emotional support.”

The Toro Family cottage, tucked away in the Pocono Mountains, is where Ray always spent the holidays growing up, but it’s been pretty much abandoned since he and his brothers flew the coop. As long as they’ve all known each other, him and Mikey always spend Christmas with Ray’s family down the Shore, and Ray’s been begging to host it at the cottage for just as long.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, Mom actually trusts me enough this year, believe it or not. So I think I’ll do it there.”

“That sounds cool,” Frank tells him sincerely. And it does, but Brian’s face looms at the edge of his perpherary like a floater he can’t blink away. He chews thoughtfully at his sandwich. He’s never missed Christmas before, and Mrs. Toro might actually kill him for it if he does. Work has never been an excuse for that woman.

Ray reaches across the table and pats the back of his hand. When he speaks, it’s like that little freak out he just had never even happened. “I know you’re in a rut, so why don’t you pack up your laptop and stuff and come out to the cottage? Maybe it’ll get the juices flowing.”

“I don’t know…”

“Come on, Frankie. I really want you there. And I know Mikey does too. This isn’t going to be the regular sun and sand thing, this is finally going to be a real white Christmas.”

What was he really going to do anyway? Order take-out from the shitty Chinese place on the corner because it’s the only thing open around here every day of the year and stare at these same four walls and wonder why he can’t write? A change of scenery will probably do him some good.

“Alright,” he says finally. “Alright, you convinced me. What’s better writing inspiration than my two best friends getting engaged?” (He reminds himself to jot that down later.)

Ray stomps his feet. “Attaboy! You’ll love it, I promise. It’s gonna be great.”

  
  


Frank quickly realizes that this might actually be a bad idea. He loves Ray and Mikey to death, and he doesn’t really have anything against Christmas, but he feels like he severely underestimated this whole thing.

He comes to find out they’re leaving for the cottage on the 19th, and will be spending an entire week there. Which is fine! A whole week in semi-seclusion? A writer’s dream! But despite Ray knowing full well about Frank’s impending deadline, the nervous energy that’s been seeping through his pores gives him the notion that it’s going to be tough getting any viable work done. And why shouldn’t he be nervous? Ray is putting Christmas together for his entire family for the first time, and at the end of it he’s going to pop _the_ question. In front of said family. So Frank really didn’t think this through.

They leave for the Poconos and the aforementioned cottage after Mikey closes up his comic shop for the last time Saturday evening, the note on the door telling passersby to have a happy and safe holidays and that he’ll return after New Years. The trip down isn’t so bad; Frank always did love long car rides, and he manages to punch a few ideas out in the backseat while munching on shitty snacks from QuickChek and reassuring an impatient Brian via email that he will definitely (hopefully) have that pitch by January 1st.

They get to the cottage just after sundown, and Frank hasn’t been here in so long he forgot just how small it was. He was only here the one time, back when Mikey bought and sold some super rare comic book that he forgets the name of and Ray drove them all up here for the weekend to celebrate. Which means they ate so many baguettes from Panera Bread that they could barely do anything more than lay around and binge shitty reality shows on Netflix. That had to be close to three years ago now.

When they get inside, dropping their bags at their feet in the tight entry hall, the first thing Frank notices is the nose-tickling smell of _dust._ Ray shuts and locks the door so they don’t let any more cold into the already-chilly house and they shuffle into the living room in a cacophony of whispering clothes. The lights are flicked on, and, well, it’s definitely a winter wonderland of cobwebs. They hang from the ceiling fan and the fireplace mantle and everything looks coated in a thin layer of the dust that’s making Frank have to sneeze so bad.

“I thought your brother was gonna keep an eye on this place,” Mikey comments, turning on the side table lamps to see if they’re working. They are, and he goes to tear off the sheet from the sofa but thinks against it.

Ray uses the sleeve of his jacket to wipe at a framed photo on the wall, grimacing as he does. He definitely didn’t plan for this.“I thought so too, but I guess it’s been hard with the new baby.”

“What about the other one?”

“Mom doesn’t let him up here by himself since he ran over the mailbox that one time.”

Frank goes back to get all of their bags from the entry hall, and hauls them into the living room. “Looks like we’ve got some spring cleaning to do, gentlemen,” he says, slightly strained but trying not to let it show. What the hell did these guys pack? Oh, right, Christmas presents. Frank still has to get on that.

Ray and Mikey share a look, and it’s like their personalities switch right then and there; Ray looks like he just got told he can’t play with his friends until he does his chores, and Mikey’s smiling. He deals with vintage comic books, he _loves_ dust. And Frank? He doesn’t mind a little bit of tidying up, especially when it almost ensures a good night’s sleep after that car ride. And a good night’s sleep usually means a productive day of writing. He hopes, once again.

Ray does a critical once-over of the small living room, hands on his hips, then says, “I guess we do.”

Mikey laughs and grabs the back of his neck so he can smack a wet kiss to his cheek. “Alright, sunshine, show us to our rooms.”

Ray wipes his face on his shoulder. “You know where we’re sleeping. What did you have for lunch?”

Just for that Mikey kisses Ray on the mouth and says, “Something garlicy,” and Frank rolls his eyes up to the wooden beams crossing the ceiling. Mikey grabs his bags from him and starts up the dark staircase two at a time on his long legs.

“Hey,” Ray says quietly, and holds out the black ring box for Frank to take. “Can you keep this safe? I don’t trust it in our room.”

“Oh, sure.” Frank takes it and puts it in his pocket, glancing behind him as the light at the top of the stairs goes on. In exchange Ray takes his bags from him too and Frank is finally left with just his stuff. “Where should I put it?”

“Sock drawer? I don’t know, don’t tell me. I might try to do it sooner and I want everything to be perfect.”

 _I might try to do it sooner._ Damn, he sounds like a horny teenager who can’t take being holed up with their crush for more than two seconds, but instead of wanting to jump Mikey’s bones, he wants to propose _marriage._ Frank inwardly laughs. Is this what being an adult is? “Sure thing. Wanna go up?”

They head upstairs and Ray veers off into the master bedroom when they reach the landing. Frank claims the spare like he did last time, with its flannel bedding and navy paint that hasn’t been touched up since Ray was a kid. It’s warmer up here since heat rises and all that, so he takes off his coat and throws it on the bed. A plume of dust rises in its place. A _little_ tidying up. Sure. More like he’s probably going to sleep until noon and not get any work done. There’s an ominous moan somewhere within the old house that could be nothing but the frozen pipes, and he drops his computer bag on the bed with a sigh.

He puts his clothes away in the dresser, his snow boots at the foot of the bed, he lays his toiletries out on the desk that’s carved with names and pictures Ray has told him about before, and his bags are shoved away out of sight. His lucky copy of _The Hesitant Alie_ n by G.A. Way goes right on the nightstand. The ring, which he almost-but-not-really forgot about, gets stuffed into an extra pocket in his computer bag because he doesn’t exactly trust Ray not to go snooping around for it, and he knows he won’t touch his work stuff.

Mikey is in the bathroom in the hall when he goes out, snooping around in the cabinet under the sink. “Hey,” Frank says, sticking his head in. “Do we have hot water?”

“Yeah.” Mikey pulls out a bucket of old cleaning supplies and sets it on the floor next to him. “Ray gave his mom a call and she told him that a neighbor checks on the pipes, so that’s good. I’ll be right down.”

Downstairs Frank finds the rest of the lights on and the windows cracked to let in some fresh air. He shivers as he follows the banging of cabinet doors into the kitchen. Ray is inspecting the fridge with a hand on his hip. “There’s nothing here,” he says, shutting the door. “The whole kitchen’s empty.”

Frank huffs a laugh through his nose. “You didn’t really expect to find anything edible, did you?”

“No, I’m glad there isn’t anything. I didn’t really feel like having to deal with expired food too. Is pizza okay tonight?”

Frank’s stomach growls just then, and he knew that cheap corn dog he got at QuickChek wasn’t going to last him long. “Better than okay.”

Ray pulls his phone out of his pocket just as Mikey comes in with the plastic bucket. “Okay, I got the shower upstairs running and this is what I found under the sink.” He puts it on the island next to the other bottles and brushes Ray must’ve found.

Ray peeks into the bucket. “The fridge is working and I turned the heat back on,” he says with a curt nod. “Oh, and the bathroom down here is good too.”

“And I have done nothing so far,” Frank announces with a flourish of his arms.

Mikey claps him on the shoulder. “You just stand there and look pretty, Iero.”

“Well you both can look pretty while you get the sheets off the furniture,” Ray tells them, brows furrowed while he orders the pizza. “Half cheese, half pepperoni, right?”

“Can you get an antipasto too?” Frank asks from the doorway as they’re leaving. He’s itching to go upstairs and get his laptop, but he figures it’s probably not polite to abandon them when they just got here. _Damn_ the holidays. He better get a bestseller out of this.

“And garlic knots?”

“Yes to the salad, no to the garlic knots. Your breath smells bad enough as it is, babe.”

Now completely out of sight of Ray, Frank is the recipient of Mikey’s comical look of offense, and he laughs. “Come on.”

They pull off the dusty white sheets from the sofa, the loveseat, and the old recliner, and shake them out on the front stoop. When they come back in Ray is there, and he helps them fold the sheets up into neat little squares that can be put away in the linen closet in the hall.

When Frank is attacking every surface he can reach with a feather duster he found in said linen closet, Ray’s phone starts to ring, playing some annoying country song that weaseled its way into the Top 40 that Mikey set as a joke forever ago but Ray still hasn’t changed, and Mikey says, “I didn’t know Papa John’s does callbacks.”

Frank looks over his shoulder in interest. Ray puts his phone to his ear, his face ridiculously neutral. “Hey! You’re close? Oh… Yeah, sure, that’s fine. Alright, we’ll see you soon then. Bye.” The phone goes back into his pocket, and Mikey has already returned to his Swiffering, but Frank continues to stare at Ray. There’s a weird feeling in his stomach.

“Who was that?” he asks, trying and failing to keep the suspicion out of his voice. Ray Toro never does anything half-assed. Mikey is probably the easiest guy to please on the planet, but ever since they got together, and even _before,_ Ray has always gone over the top for him. Like, disgustingly so.

(Frank says _disgustingly_ like the two of them aren’t one of his biggest writing inspirations.)

Ray shrugs nonchalantly, and goes back to cleaning the fireplace “I put an order into Shipt until we can pick up some stuff in the morning.”

And, well, that actually sounds like the truth, doesn’t it? But even when the Shipt delivery person shows up right after the pizza, Frank still wonders what Ray’s got up his sleeve. Because knowing him, there has to be something.

  
  


After dinner and three episodes of _That ‘70s Show_ on Mikey’s laptop that they stream using the hotspot from his phone, they go full steam ahead on the spring cleaning. The rest of the dust gets tackled, the bathrooms scrubbed, and anything that can be thrown into the washing machine does, and they’re at it until well after midnight. When the cottage smells a bit too much like chemicals, Frank collapses in his bed and falls asleep before he can even get his jeans off.

He wakes up to an actual banshee in his room the next morning. No, that’s just a vacuum cleaner. There’s a split second before he opens his eyes when he forgets what year it is and he’s convinced it’s a Saturday back home and his mom is cleaning his room before she drops him off at soccer practice, but then he sees Ray at the foot of the bed, and he sighs.

“You’re not getting that ring,” he says over the screeching of the vacuum. How late is it?

Ray looks at him and his face lights up. He kicks the switch and the room is plunged into blessed silence. “Morning, Sleeping Beauty. What’d you say?”

“I said,” Frank pushes himself up in the bed and wrinkles his nose when he finds he’s still in yesterday’s clothes, “I’m not giving you the ring yet.”

Ray’s eyebrows do something that tell Frank he wasn’t thinking that, but now that it’s off the table he’s disappointed anyway. “I _know,_ I was just trying to get some more cleaning done.”

Frank yawns into the back of his hand and checks the time on his phone. It’s just after eight and the sun is streaming through the windows, melting the icicles that hang from the gutters. It’s _early,_ thank God. “How long have you been up?”

“We’ve been up for about an hour.” Ray starts winding the cord around the handle of the vacuum. Mikey? Getting up at a reasonable hour too? Christmastime really is magical. “Breakfast should be ready if you wanna come down.”

“Yeah.” Frank climbs out of bed, his muscles sore and stiff from all the _strenuous_ cleaning they did last night (not strenuous, he’s just out of shape and cleaning his apartment usually only takes about half an hour). “Yeah, I’ll be right down.”

When Ray is gone Frank hops in the shower, and he can’t tell if the fact that the water won’t get any hotter than lukewarm or the smell of bleach is worse. When he’s dry and dressed, he realizes the cottage is as nice as he remembers, now that he can see it in daylight. The stained glass window above the front door, the gorgeous hardwood floors, Ray’s award-winning photographs mingling with his family pictures on the walls. And now that it’s no longer as cold and dusty as the back room of an antique store, it finally feels as cozy as it probably did when Ray was a kid. The sound of Bing Crosby and the smell of bacon when he reaches the bottom of the stairs is definitely a plus too.

“Hey, Frankie,” Mikey greets from the breakfast nook when Frank steps into the kitchen. Ray is sitting across from him, and they’re both eating. There’s a cup of coffee waiting for him on the island, and the front of the mug has a picture of the Grinch on it.

“Hey,” he says as he serves himself some scrambled eggs and bacon. There’s even toast in the toaster. The music is coming from a record player on the kitchen counter, one of those kinds with the clear lids. “Where did that come from?”

Ray and Mikey look up in unison, and Ray’s cheeks go all pink and shiny again. “Early Christmas present from this one.”

Frank watches Mikey kick him gently beneath the table, and dumps enough packets of sugar into his coffee to choke a horse. “Nice.” God, he needs to start leaving himself some Post-Its.

“So I think what we’ll do today is the grocery shopping, just to get it out of the way,” Ray says when they’ve finished breakfast. “And then we’ll meet up with Mikey’s brother for lunch.”

“What?” Mikey’s head snaps up from where he was washing the dishes. As if sensing the sudden tension in the room, the song that was playing ends and the record player stutters to a stop, leaving the kitchen in a silence that makes the hair on the back of Frank’s neck stand up. “My _brother?”_

Frank is leaning over the counter, and he watches the scene unfold as if he were a fly on the wall. He keeps his phone held up like he’s still trying to hack into a neighbor’s WiFi network, but his eyes are glued on Ray drying the dishes Mikey’s giving him like he didn’t just practically say Voldemort’s name. Which— Here’s the thing. Mikey’s brother has sort of been a taboo subject since Frank has known him, but he still doesn’t know _why._ He’s been led to believe that it has something to do with him abandoning Mikey back in the day, but he never divulged beyond that. He doesn’t even think Ray knows.

“I invited him to Christmas,” Ray explains, putting the plate he was drying into the cabinet.

“How did you even get his _number?”_ Oh man, he sounds pissed. Mikey Way is chill about exactly everything except his brother.

Ray shrugs faux nonchalantly. “It’s on the fridge at home under the _Evil Dead_ magnet. Your mom gave it to you at your dad’s funeral, remember?”

Mikey drops whatever he was washing into the sink. Frank bites his lip. “You didn’t invite my mother too, did you?”

“No, Gerard said it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.”

Mikey stares at Ray for a second. “Did you actually invite him?” he asks, deadpan.

Now Ray looks kind of uncomfortable, and he finally looks to Frank for help. Frank, because he’s actually the worst friend on the planet, hurriedly looks back down at his phone. “Uh, yeah. He’s staying at a motel in town.”

“Oh my God.” Mikey shakes the soap from his hands and storms out. Beneath his thundering footsteps ascending the stairs, Frank thinks, _So that’s what Ray was hiding up his sleeve._ The estranged brother. Jesus.

Ray shuts the sink off. “Oh my God, I’m so stupid.”

Frank puts his phone away with all the speed of an elderly turtle and says, “Why did you invite him?”

Ray holds his hands out. “Because—!” He sighs and lowers his voice. “Because I’m going to ask him to marry me, Frank, and my entire family is going to be there. But not his.”

“Well—”

“I just didn’t think it through! I was so—so high on the moment that I didn’t realize how _bad_ of an idea it was.”

“I don’t think it was a bad—”

“It was so last minute I’m still surprised Gerard even agreed to it. Now I have to call him back and tell him to _leave—”_

“Ray.” Frank rounds the island and shakes him a bit by the shoulder. “It wasn’t a bad idea. If I was Mikey and you invited, say, my _dad,_ yeah I’d probably be pissed too, but I knew you were just doing it out of the goodness of your heart.”

“My entire family is going to be there,” Ray tells him again, sort of desperately. “And he loves them, and they love him, but it’s _Christmas,_ you know?”

Frank nods. “I know, I get it.”

“Why would Gerard even agree to come if he hates Christmas?”

Frank shrugs. “Maybe he’s the Grinch. Wants to steal Christmas.” He knows it’s a stupid joke the second it’s out of his mouth, so when Ray looks like he’s going to blow an artery he says, “I’m _kidding._ Maybe he, I don’t know, wants to change his ways or something.”

Ray raises his eyebrows. “I mean…hopefully.”

Frank shakes him again, this time a little harder. “Just go talk to Mikey. He’ll understand, he always does.”

Ray manages a pitiful smile, and he squeezes the back of Frank’s neck. “How do you always give such good advice when you’re chronically single?”

Frank laughs. “Comes with being a writer, I guess.” Ray starts for the living room, still smiling a little, and Frank says, “Hey. What happened between them?”

He blows out a breath. “I know about as much as you do.”

Well. It looks like they’re both going into this blind. With how much Mikey _doesn’t_ talk about his brother, Frank is expecting the guy to be the world’s biggest asshole, because he even talks about his parents (albeit just to complain), who he has a notoriously bad relationship with too. Frank sighs and drops the needle on the B-side of whichever one of the millions of Bing Crosby’s Christmas albums Mikey got Ray.

This afternoon should be interesting.

Finally Frank worms his way into a WiFi network, so he heads back up to his room. The door to the master is shut, and just behind it he can hear Mikey and Ray talking. He shuts his own door behind him.

Figuring he probably has some time to himself before Ray drags him out to go shopping (unless he can get himself out of it, which he highly doubts), Frank pulls out his laptop and gets comfortable. He checks his social media, he answers a couple of emails, reassuring Brian for what has to be the millionth time that _yes,_ he will have something for him soon, and _no,_ he’s not going to get distracted out here, and eventually he starts skimming through his plethora of WIPs, scrolling up, down, sideways, and backwards until something sounds interesting enough for him to want to refine. But still nothing does. None of his half-baked synopses or random bullet-pointed character studies grab his attention and lights that familiar spark in his belly.

Frank drums his fingers on his keyboard. _I wrote two books that did fairly well, I have people that really enjoy my writing and compliment me on how effortless I make it seem, so what the hell is wrong with me?_ Even when he’s got writer’s block (which isn’t often, thankfully), he can pump out _something._ Even if it’s just a couple thousand words describing the view outside his living room window.

He gets up off the bed, shoving his laptop to the side, and heads for the window. It’s sunny out, in the way that makes the fresh snow on the lawn look as bright as a flash of lightning. Ray’s car is parked down below in the driveway, the windshield frozen over because the cottage doesn’t have a garage to pull into. There’s the neighbor’s house, and another one across the street with enough lights strung up to rival the Griswold’s, and if he squints out into the distance he thinks he can see town. Frank sighs again, and his breath fogs up the glass. He turns back to face the room, fiddling with the buttons on his cardigan like he can find the answers he’s looking for in the polished plastic. And then his eyes land on his copy of _The Hesitant Alien,_ sitting on the desk next to his wallet.

Frank goes over and picks it up. The spine is cracked and the edges of the covers worn, and it feels so familiar in his hands. The white background, the faceless character on the front with their blue suit and red tie. He flips it over, and G.A. Way’s semi-familiar face stares up at him, smiling and bright and seeming to tell him, like it usually does, _Write!!!_ Frank fans the pages beneath his thumb and looks back at his laptop.

There’s a knock at the door. “Hey, Frank?”

Frank puts the book down. He’ll figure something out. He always does. When he opens the door, Ray is standing there, his eyes red, and Mikey is behind him equally puffy and disheveled. “Everything good?”

Mikey puts his hand on Ray’s lower back, and Ray smiles at him. “Guess we’re having lunch with my brother.”

  
  


Frank decides to bring it up in the car on the way to the store because he figures he and Ray should have _some_ sort of backstory going into this. “So, what’s the deal with, uh—with your brother?”

He can clearly see the tick in Mikey’s jaw. “Do you really wanna know?”

“If you’re willing to tell me, I mean, sure.”

Mikey cranks up the heat with a quick flick of his hand. “He’s an asshole and I haven’t spoken to him since our dad died.” He takes a sharp right turn into town. “I don’t even remember what the last time was before that.”

Since his _dad died._ That was just before they met him. So about five years ago. Frank would whistle if that wouldn’t make him the world’s biggest douchebag.

“So you know how I wanted to write comic books?”

“Yeah,” Frank says. “But you told me it didn’t work out, that’s why you bought the shop.”

“What I didn’t tell you is that Gerard and I were going to write comics _together._ It was this huge dream we had when we were kids and we had it all planned out to the point where all we needed was some money.” Mikey pauses for a while, and Frank waits patiently. He never knew this, and it’s almost like he’s meeting Mikey for the first time all over again. He wonders if Ray is feeling the same. “Our parents wanted us to go to college so we could do something _respectable_ with our lives, so I didn’t go.” That Frank did know. “Gerard did though, of course. But I didn’t care, you know? I got a job right out of high school and figured once he graduated we’d really hunker down on the comic thing. Because I was serious about it, I really was, and I thought he was too. The whole time he was away we were planning shit out over the phone and sending each other drawings and stuff.”

It comes out like Mikey’s had it bottled up for a while, and Frank figures he did. He shakes his head a little and lets out a huff of derisive laughter. When he doesn’t continue, Frank’s about to ask him _“What happened?”_ like he was just left with a cliffhanger when Ray opens his mouth.

“Gerard came home and just told you he was moving to New York, right?”

Frank’s stomach drops like he’s watching a particularly suspenseful movie. “What? Seriously? What happened to the comics?”

Mikey shrugs heavily, smacking his hands on the steering wheel when his shoulders come back down. “He told me he met a girl whose parents owned a publishing company, and that he was going to write books instead of comics. Since they’re—get this— _more respectable.”_

He’s a writer too? “Oh. Shit.”

“Yep. It’s been more than ten years and it still pisses me off. God.”

“I mean, for good reason,” Ray assures.

“Thanks. But yeah, I knew that was our parents talking. I thought all that time away from home would’ve gotten him out from under their thumb, but nope.” Another pause and Ray reaches over to put his hand on Mikey’s thigh. “Here’s the thing. Our parents never liked me all that much, you know? I hated school, I didn’t want to go into _business,_ and I had kind of a tendency to stick my tongue down boys’ throats in the bathroom during their dinner parties. But Gerard was the golden child. And I couldn’t, like, fault him for that. One of us had to suck up to them. But, you know, I thought when he came home everything would be back on track. I don’t really know what happened.”

They pull into the parking lot of a ShopRite, and Mikey parks close to the front. Frank unbuckles his seatbelt. “Well,” he says once the engine is shut off and the semi-awkward silence has gone on long enough. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk so much.”

Mikey laughs and scratches at the flush on his neck. “I’ve got a lot to say. And I’m not even done.”

“Jesus, there’s _more?”_

He shrugs again. “Not much, but.”

“Do you want to tell us?” Ray asks gently, carefully.

Mikey takes the keys out of ignition. “Basically Gerard just left me to try and make it in comics on my own.” Oh, now the pieces are starting to come together. Mikey opens his door first and gets out. Frank and Ray follow suit. Once outside and heading for the front doors of the grocery store, he says, “Our parents didn’t give me a cent, and I used everything I had saved to finally get myself an apartment. Gerard never helped me out either, even when all that kiddie book money started coming in.”

 _Kiddie book?_ Frank vaguely wonders if he knows Mikey’s brother. Now he does whistle, because he feels like it’s necessary. “Damn. He does kind of sound like an asshole.”

Mikey snorts and grabs Ray’s hand. Frank steps up onto Ray’s other side. “You’re telling me. I’ve pretty much given up on him.” He bumps his shoulder into Ray’s. “But I’m giving him another _chance,_ because I kind of like this guy here.”

Well hopefully all that _like_ Mikey’s got for Ray is enough to keep the civility this week. For Ray’s sake.

  
  


Hours later, when they’re all sore in the feet and the kitchen is stocked fuller than a doomsday bunker, it’s finally time for lunch. After Frank and Ray showered and are now sitting downstairs on the couch together, Mikey comes silently down the stairs like a ghost, dressed to leave and staring at his phone. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

Frank shares a look with Ray and they get up from the couch in unison. He politely looks away when Ray kisses Mikey, and they leave.

The restaurant is way more formal than anything Frank has seen in the Poconos, and Frank prays to God, no matter how rude it may be, that no one starts a scene here. With everything Mikey said in the car earlier, he just has that feeling.

“Are you nervous?” Ray asks Mikey when they park.

“To see my flesh-and-blood brother? Nah. Maybe a little annoyed, but not nervous. C’mon.” He gets out of the car and shuts the door behind him.

“I’m nervous,” Ray says when it’s just the two of them, and Frank laughs.

“How bad can he be?” But even as Frank says it, he hopes it’s not going to bite him in the ass.

There’s a knock on the window and they both jump. Mikey is standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, his eyebrows raised. Ray heaves a huge sigh and climbs out.

Well. Here goes nothing.

They go in together, taking off their jackets and folding them over their arms. It’s not a big restaurant, so there’s no coat check or anything, so when they don’t see Gerard anywhere, they let a waitress walk them to a table towards the back and they drape their jackets over their chairs and sit.

“Can I get you gentlemen something to drink?” the woman asks, a pen poised on her notepad.

“What kind of alcohol do you have?” Mikey asks before anyone else can answer. She gestures to the drink menu that’s sitting in the center of the table and he snatches it up. Ray leans over to read it with him. “Can you bring us a bottle of the Merlot?” He says eventually. The whole _bottle?_ Jesus, Mikey. “Frank, you like red wine, right?”

“I mean, you know I’m more of a beer guy, but—”

“Do you want beer?”

Frank flicks his eyes from Mikey to the waitress, who’s waiting patiently. “Uh, no, wine is fine.”

“Great,” says the waitress, and starts passing out the menus she had tucked under her arm. “Are we waiting for someone else?”

“Yeah, just one more,” Ray says kindly, and puts his arm around the back of Mikey’s chair as if he’s placating a rowdy child.

“Perfect. I’ll be right back with your drinks.”

When she’s gone, Frank and Ray are staring at Mikey, and he says, “What’d I do?”

“You’re being weird,” Frank tells him, and Ray gives him a look. “I mean, you seem kind of stressed, man.”

“That’s why I ordered wine. It got me through my dad’s funeral and it’ll get me through this.”

Ray looks highly concerned at this. They both know how shitfaced Mikey got then. It’s his favorite story to tell at parties because after the service him and a cousin almost started a fire at his parents’ house. “W— _No—”_

“Frank, listen,” Mikey says suddenly, pointing at him. But he doesn’t continue.

Frank frowns. “What?”

Mikey frowns back. He doesn’t seem to know how to say whatever he wants to say to him. Then his eyes flick over Frank and he groans. “Oh, God.”

Ray looks up too. Frank’s stomach does something funny, and he turns around in his chair. The lighting is dim, and he squints at the person making their way through the tables towards them. He sees the long black coat, the chunky scarf, and—

And it’s G.A. Way. Author of _The Paper Kingdom_ and _The Hesitant Alien,_ G.A. Way.

His hair is a light, _light_ brown. Lighter than Ray’s. Almost red. It’s long and black in his headshot on the back of _The Hesitant Alien,_ and he’s rounder in the face since then too. And Frank is staring.

 _G.A. Way. Gerard Way._ Holy shit, he’s so fucking stupid.

“Oh my God,” Frank says loudly. Mikey—or Ray, he’s not sure who—kicks him _hard_ under the table. He completely forgets that this is Mikey’s asshole brother and says again, “Oh my God?”

“Uh,” Ray says, standing and offering his hand to Gerard when he gets to the table. He looks to be in shock too. “Nice to finally meet you?”

“Hey,” Gerard says, clearing his throat and shaking Ray’s hand politely. His voice is high and kind of nasally. And then he pulls out the empty chair next to Frank and sits down, coat and all. His scarf he unwinds from around his neck and shoves in his pocket.

“I’m a huge fan,” Frank says immediately, his mouth feeling like it belongs to someone else, and offers his hand too after wiping it on his pants. He’s thought about what it would be like to meet G.A. Way a million times before (he almost did too, back when he published his first book and Brian tried to invite him to one of his New Years Eve parties, but if there’s two things Frank hates, it’s parties and the city— _New York City;_ Frank is so, so stupid), but no amount of daydreaming could have possibly prepared him for the real thing. He’s having lunch with the guy! _He’s Mikey’s brother and he’s spending Christmas with them!_

“Frank.” Mikey stands suddenly. “Bathroom.”

“What? But—”

He throws his napkin at him. _“Bathroom.”_

Frank waits for G.A.— _Gerard—_ to return his semi-embarrassing greeting, but he just glances at him briefly and picks up the menu that was supposed to be Frank’s. Frank frowns and follows after Mikey. Behind them, he hears Gerard ask Ray, “Did you order drinks?” all business-like.

In the bathroom, Mikey waits until the guy that’s at the urinal leaves before he’s throwing his hands in the air and saying, “You’re supposed to be on my side, dude!”

Frank’s head is spinning. “You never told me your brother was _G.A. Way._ All those times I talked about him? Why didn’t you say anything!” Mikey stares at him like he’s stupid. Which, he really is. Frank sighs. “Right, fine. _Fine._ I’ll try and be…neutral.”

Which is definitely going to be easier said than done.

Mikey doesn’t look like he entirely trusts Frank, but he nods. “Good.”

He’s about to leave the bathroom but Frank grabs his sleeve. “What about Ray?”

“What about him?”

“You know he’s only capable of being nice to people.”

Mikey shrugs. “He can do whatever he wants.” And then he leaves the bathroom, and Frank is left staring at his own reflection in the mirror.

He hates his best friends. And he especially hates that his best friends are in _love._

When Frank gets back to the table, their waitress is there with their glasses and a dark bottle of wine balanced on a tray. He sits down next to Gerard, and doesn’t look at him. And he definitely doesn’t look at Mikey either. “Are you gentlemen ready to order?”

Gerard says, “I’ll have the salmon. Extra sauce. And,” he holds up the empty wine glass by the stem for her to take back that she just set down in front of him. Mikey, who’s in the middle of pouring himself some of the Merlot, pauses, “water with lemon.”

She takes the glass and his menu, which was supposed to be Frank’s, still smiling that customer service smile of hers. “Surely. What will everyone else be having?”

Gerard turns his light eyes on them, probably expectantly, but it comes off as kind of bored. “Jesus Christ,” Mikey grumbles. “No, sorry, can you give us a minute?”

The waitress fishmouths a little but barely stumbles. “Of course!”

“You’re not the only one at this table,” Mikey tells his brother when she's gone, taking a pointed sip from his wine glass. No, _sip_ is too generous. He takes a gulp.

Ray flaps his fingers against his palm and Frank hands him his glass. In return he gets Ray’s menu. “So, uh, Gerard,” he says quickly, pouring the wine, “You don’t drink?”

Frank expected the question to elicit a conversation, but all Gerard says is, “Yeah,” and continues to stare off across the restaurant while chewing at the inside of his cheek. Ray shares a look with Frank when he gives him back his filled glass. This is weird. This is _so_ weird.

It’s quiet and awkward when the three of them peruse the menu, and Frank is hyper-aware of Gerard sitting next to him, close enough that if he were to move his elbow out a little he’d be bumping into his arm. He has a million things to ask him, a million things to say to him, but he knows Mikey will probably kill him. He’s definitely capable of it.

He has no idea how much time passes before their waitress is returning again, this time with a tall glass of ice water with a slice of lemon perched on the rim.

“How are we doing here?” The name tag on her shirt reads _Dani,_ and Frank reminds himself to mention her in his prayers tonight.

Ray collects the menus and hands them to her. “I think we’re good to go, yeah? Yeah. Mikey?”

“Gimme a bleu cheese burger with sweet potato fries and coleslaw. Medium well.”

“I’ll have the chef salad, please,” Ray says. “And can I please have Russian dressing on the side?”

“Surely.” She scribbles it down on her notepad and looks at Frank.

“Uh, I’ll have what he’s having.” He gestures to Gerard and then winces. “The salmon.”

“O-kay!” She flips her notepad shut and graces them all with a smile that does nothing for the electric cloud that’s hanging over the table. “It should be out in a second.”

Frank is almost dreading her leaving this time, but she does, and the three of them are left staring at each other. Well, Frank and Ray stare at each other. Mikey is having a blast drinking his wine. Frank feels like it’s his turn to try and break the ice. He’s bursting at the seams with everything he wants to say to Gerard, but he attempts neutrality. “The salmon sounds good. You like fish?”

Gerard actually looks at him then, and if they were playing poker instead of waiting for their lunch, he’d be winning. Or something. (Frank’s never played poker.) “Yeah.”

“Do you not eat meat anymore either?” Mikey asks from across the table, sounding petty and annoyed.

Gerard takes a second to answer, like he’s making sure he knows just what to say before he says it. “I’m a vegetarian.”

Mikey scoffs loudly into his glass, but before Frank can wonder just how that could possibly offend him, Ray is butting in with, “I’m glad you told us! One of my sisters-in-law is completely vegan, so don’t worry, there’s going to be options for you at Christmas dinner.”

Frank thinks maybe the ice has finally been broken, but then Gerard takes a sip of his water and hums again and leaves it at that, and he feels like they’re back at square one. If there even was a square one to begin with. Frank catches Ray’s eye again, and he looks concerned, like maybe this isn’t going the way he planned. But Dani swoops in to save the day, and this time her arms are lined with steaming plates of food. At least now they have the excuse of eating not to make conversation.

But, of course, Ray tries again. “So.” Mikey makes a noise into his burger and Frank chances a glance up at him to make sure he’s not going to say anything else stupid. “How was the trip down? Did you hit a lot of traffic?”

“Not much,” Gerard says. “My driver knew a lot of backroads.”

 _“Driver?”_ Mikey’s voice is full of disgust, and Frank really is starting to not recognize him right now. He guesses family, especially siblings, can bring something different out in everyone. It happens when Ray is around his family too, but in the opposite way.

Gerard meets his brother’s eye, his fork halfway to his mouth, and says steadily, “I Ubered here.”

Frank thinks Mikey will shut up now that he was sort of made a fool with that, but he just keeps on going. The hole he’s digging himself has got to be at least six feet deep by now. “You made some poor bastard drive you all the way from New _York?_ That probably didn’t even make a dent in your vacation money, huh?”

Gerard sighs down at his plate just as Ray is saying sternly, and kind of nervously, _“Mikey.”_

Frank really wants to crawl under the table right now. When he looks over at Gerard, he sees him gripping his knee. His face is still just as even though, and Frank has a feeling Mikey isn’t going to stop until he cracks. But then Gerard does something smart, and that is pushing himself away from the table in the universal gesture of getting ready to leave. Frank almost tells him to stay, but thinks against it. For Mikey’s sake, and the perfect holiday Ray is trying to put together, he can’t be biased.

“Uh, I think—”

“Excuse me?” A woman comes up to them then, seemingly appearing out of nowhere, and the little girl with her is smiling at Gerard like he hung the moon. Frank knows that look; he probably looked at Gerard like that too before Mikey gave him a stern talking to in the bathroom. The woman glances at each of them in turn as if to apologize for interrupting, and pulls a book from her purse. “My daughter absolutely loves your books. She reads them all the time.”

The little girl, who can’t be more than nine or ten, takes the second book in the _Paper Kingdom_ series from her mom’s hands and turns it over to point at the tiny picture of Gerard on the back cover as if he wouldn’t recognize it. “I let my best friend Lizzie borrow the first book, and even though she folded all the pages instead of using a bookmark like I do, but she really liked it! So now we’re gonna read this one together when we go back to school and talk about it. Did you know I draw pictures?”

She reaches for her mom’s purse but the woman stops her. “Jada, I’m sure Mr. Way would like to get back to his lunch.” She looks at them all again. “Do you want to ask him to sign your book?”

“Oh!” Jada says, like she forgot just why she came over here. She thrusts the book at Gerard. “Hold on, I’ve got the _perfect_ marker. It’s just like the one Rosie uses! In the story!”

Rosie Hathaway, the little protagonist of _The Paper Kingdom,_ armed with her construction paper and _magic_ marker. Frank hides a smile in his glass of wine before he gets kicked again.

“No, that’s okay,” Gerard says curtly, to Frank’s surprise, stopping the little girl from trying to dive into her mom’s purse again. He pulls a pen from a pocket inside his coat and clicks it. She looks a little disappointed, and something inside Frank shifts.

“You know, she wants to be a writer too,” the woman tells Gerard as he’s signing his name on the title page, probably to fill the sudden, awkward silence. He signs just his name. No personal message, no little doodle like Frank likes to do, just his straight, professional signature.

He snaps the book shut and hands it back to the girl. “Good luck with that.”

The woman looks a little surprised at his brusqueness, and they leave quickly once she makes her daughter thank him.

Frank lets out a breath and takes a gulp of his wine. He doesn’t think he’s ever witnessed a more painful interaction. Is that what it would have been like if he met Gerard at one of his New Years Eve parties?

Ray shoves a forkful of salad into his mouth, and the crunch of the lettuce finally sets Mikey off. “What, are you a dick to kids now too?”

“Mike, please,” Gerard says tiredly, pulling his scarf from his pocket and wrapping it around his neck.

“I hope you and your _wife_ don’t have any at home. In New York.”

Frank catches Ray’s wide eyes just as Gerard is getting up quick enough his knees hit the table. “Fuck this,” he says. “I’ll see you on Friday.”

And then he whirls around and leaves, and when Frank turns to watch him go, he sees Dani the waitress lingering off to the side, a slightly shocked expression on her face.

“Damn it, Mikey,” Ray sighs. “I thought you were going to give him a chance.”

“Sorry, couldn’t help it.” Mikey reaches across the table and picks up Gerard’s plate. “Can we get this to go?” he calls to Dani, who is slowly making their way over to them.

When Frank thought about what it would be like to meet G.A. Way, he definitely didn’t imagine it to go like _that._

  
  


The rest of the day is one big back-and-forth between Ray and Mikey that consists of variations of _“You told me you were going to be nice!”_ and _“Easier said than done!”_ and by the time the sun sets, Frank is aching to crawl into bed and feign productivity. He should’ve stayed home.

He leaves the two of them to bicker it out some more in front of the fire, since Ray can never let things go, especially when he’s trying so hard to make this holiday _nice,_ and reads _The Hesitant Alien_ with a new set of eyes over his open, waiting laptop until he falls asleep. When Frank wakes up, the book is on the floor and his phone is telling him it’s just after one. Sometime before he dropped off he typed out _Estranged brothers? Make amends at Christmas?_ in the blank document. He deletes it and shuts the laptop.

Frank is about to turn over and go back to sleep when he realizes he’s sort of dying for something to drink, so he heaves himself out of bed, picking his book up and putting it on the desk, and heads downstairs. The fire is completely dead now, and it’s left the cottage smelling like the inside of an ashtray. Sleeve held over his nose, Frank goes to open the front door to let in some fresh air.

Standing on the stoop outside is Gerard, hand raised as if to knock.

“Holy _shit.”_ They both drop their arms at the same time. “Uh?”

Behind him, a car is pulling out of the driveway. The tip of his nose is red from the cold and he’s frowning. “Can I come in?”

Frank stares at him for a second, then stares at the bags he’s carrying, and says again, “Uh?”

A freezing gust of wind rustles them both, blowing at Gerard’s hair, and he shakes his head sharply. “Never mind.”

“No, wait—” Frank steps aside to let him in. Gerard looks at him like he doesn’t entirely trust him, but then another breeze hits them and he hurries inside. With him he has a suitcase, a duffel bag over one shoulder, and a black mesh carrier over the other. “What is that?”

Gerard lifts the carrier. Inside, bundled up, is a silver cat with a smushed face. “Mitch. I thought we could fly under the radar, but.”

“What?” Is Frank dreaming? He definitely feels like he’s dreaming right now.

Gerard lowers the cat. “No pet policy.” A muscle twinges in his jaw. “You know what? I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know why I’m here.”

Frank glances at the stairs. He probably should tell him to go, but. “No, no, that’s fine.” He shuts the front door. That should be enough fresh air to clear the smoke smell anyway. His own voice is echoing in his head: _Maybe he wants to change his ways._

“Okay,” Gerard sighs. “Is there a spare?”

Frank looks at the stairs again, but figures Mikey drank enough today to keep him knocked out safely for the rest of the night. “No, uh, you’ll have to sleep on the couch.” Gerard nods, and Frank leads him out of the entry hall and into the living room. He gestures at the couch like Gerard couldn’t figure out for himself where it was. “I’ll get you some blankets.”

When he comes back from raiding the linen closet, a set of musty blankets piled in his arms, Gerard has his coat and scarf off and is working on getting the pet carrier unzipped. When it’s open, Mitch the cat comes bursting through and makes a mad dash for the kitchen.

“Sorry, they’re a little old,” Frank says, handing the blankets off to Gerard.

“Thanks.” A beat passes, and a complicated look crosses Gerard’s face. “Um, it’s Frank, right?”

“Yeah.” Suddenly Frank feels stupid, standing here in his socks and fluffy pants while Gerard is fully dressed. And also because he’s _G.A. Way._ This guy is standing right here in front of him and he has no idea of the impact he had on his life, his career. Frank wouldn’t even be in this cottage right now if it wasn’t for him. Life is funny sometimes. And sort of fucked up.

“Frank, I just want to apologize. For earlier. At lunch.” He looks like he wants to say more, but he tightens his hold on the blankets, brows drawn.

Frank, just tired enough to make a fool of himself if he stands here any longer, starts backing up towards the stairs, forgetting the reason he even came down here in the first place. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. Uh, goodnight.”

Gerard nods, looking sad and drawn and so unlike the person Frank met this afternoon. And different still from the version of him he’s always had in his head. “‘Night.”

Frank goes back upstairs with a dry mouth and the hope that Mikey doesn’t kill him in the morning.

  
  


Frank wakes with a start, and lays in bed staring at the sun on the ceiling until he remembers suddenly _Gerard Way is downstairs._ He sits up and finds Mitch the cat laying on top of his copy of _The Hesitant Alien,_ which he knocked from the nightstand. So that’s what woke him up; Mikey is always saying how cats are nature’s alarm clock or something. God, _Mikey._

Frank gets out of bed and shoos the cat away, and just as he’s putting the book back, cover up, the door to the master opens across the hall.

“We’re going to have _so_ much fun today,” Ray is saying. “You always pick the best trees.”

“It’s a gift.” Mikey yawns loudly. “Frank, you up?”

 _Shit._ Frank sticks his head out of his room and smiles. “Morning!”

Mikey looks like he got run over by the Polar Express, which is how he usually looks in the morning. His hair is sticking up and out in about twelve different directions, his posture is worse than usual, and he’s got his glasses on and hanging from the tip of his nose like a little old lady. “God, _why_ are both of you such morning people.”

“Because we don’t have jobs that start at ten o’clock in the mid-morning.” Ray on the other hand looks ready to pose for _Men’s Health,_ which is also the norm for him, even when he’s wearing that ratty old T-shirt that Frank’s pretty sure is a hand-me-down. “And also we didn’t drink as much as you did yesterday. C’mon, Frankie, breakfast time, and then we gotta get to the Christmas tree lot before all the nicest ones are gone.”

They start down the stairs, Ray in front and Mikey loping behind, and Frank has half a mind not to fling himself down the stairs to get ahead of them. “Hey, so, guys—”

“Is that a _cat?”_ Frank stretches around Mikey and sees Mitch sitting by the front door, swishing his tail and cleaning his paw. Ray looks behind him. “Did you leave the door open?”

Mikey smacks him on the back. “We were the last ones up. Did _you_ leave the door open?”

“Listen, uh—” Frank squeezes past both of them, putting his back to the living room. They’re still looking at Mitch, hands out, trying to coax him to come over.

And then Mikey glances up and his face drops. He stands up straight. “You’ve _gotta_ be kidding me.” Frank looks behind him to find Gerard standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a Starbucks cup in hand. His face may as well be made from marble as he looks at his brother. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Gerard gestures to Frank with his coffee and Frank whips around to face Mikey, his stomach in his throat. Mikey throws his head back and groans. _“Frank.”_

“He let me in last night.” _Shut up, Gerard._

“Frank!”

“I couldn’t just tell him to leave!”

Mikey shoves his glasses up his nose with enough force to break them. All traces of lingering sleep have completely left him now. “Yes you could have! Watch: Gerard, we’ll see you on Friday.”

“Hey, _no.”_ Finally Ray steps up, and he looks way too pleased at this. He stands in the middle of the three of them. “This is great. Gerard, you are more than welcome here.”

Gerard looks viscerally uncomfortable, and he just nods. But then he says, like it’s an afterthought, “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to.”

Ray frowns, but he shakes it off pretty quick. “Uh, great. Breakfast anyone?”

Gerard slips back into the kitchen and Frank watches him go. What a strange guy; Frank can’t seem to place him. Is he an asshole like Mikey’s made him out to be? The nice, quiet guy who writes books for kids that Frank has looked up to for years now? And who was that last night, all sad and skittish? Mikey tries to go too, stomping his feet like a child, but Ray catches him by the wrist and pulls him back. Frank only stays because he feels like it would be weird to follow behind Gerard. Ray puts his hands on the sides of Mikey’s face. “Third time’s the charm?” he says hopefully.

Mikey sighs. “Ray…”

Ray kisses him, and Frank turns his eyes on Mitch, who’s batting at the zipper on Gerard’s suitcase. _“Mikey…”_

Mikey sucks in a deep breath. “Okay. _Okay._ I’m done being an asshole. But only if he is.”

Frank doesn’t point out that Gerard has yet to be an asshole.

Ray kisses him again, this time on the cheek just below his glasses. “That’s all I ask.”

When they pull away, Mikey starts jokingly when he spots Frank lingering like a shadow. “You’re still here?”

Frank shakes his head and claps them both on the shoulder. “Let’s eat. I’m starving.”

Gerard is sitting at the breakfast nook when they file into the kitchen, staring out the window into the backyard and picking at the cardboard ring on his cup. He doesn’t even look over, but Frank wasn’t expecting him to. Ray starts in on breakfast and Mikey on a pot of coffee, and Frank sits down at the table. The first thing he notices, other than the freckle on the tip of Gerard’s nose or how much greener his eyes are than in his picture on the back of _The Hesitant Alien,_ is the way his left hand is completely bare. He’s not wearing a wedding ring. Well _that’s_ interesting.

“Gerard, did you eat?” Ray asks, mixing up some pancake batter.

“Yeah, I got a muffin at Starbucks.”

“That’s not breakfast,” Mikey says, and it actually sounds like a tease instead of an accusation. And it looks like it surprises both of them. When Frank catches Ray’s eye, he smiles. _Progress,_ is what it seems to say. Speaking of—

“You know, I think I’m gonna stay here today.” He’s already wasted enough time as it is, getting invested in Mikey’s personal life like this is an episode of some trashy reality show. And also he wasn’t expecting to be spending the week with G.A. Way, so that’s thrown him off a bit. But who knows, maybe he can use it to his advantage. 

“You’re not gonna help us pick out a tree?” Ray asks, pouting as he mixes the batter. There’s flour on his cheek already.

“Brian is going to serve my ass on a platter—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have some _fun._ Come on, dude.”

“Do you really want me to third wheel the whole week?” Frank asks. “I do that enough with you guys.”

“Fine. What if Gerard comes?”

Gerard and Mikey both look slightly alarmed at this, and Gerard says, “No, that’s okay. Really.” Mikey visibly relaxes and turns back to pouring the coffee.

“Are you sure? Because—”

“Let’s not push it.” Gerard gives him a strained smile, and for the splittest of seconds, he almost looks like the guy on the back of his book.

Ray smiles back, though it’s more genuine. “Fair point.”

When Mikey brings a cup of coffee over for Frank, his back is ramrod straight, like all his muscles are coiled as tight as a snake’s. “Thanks, man,” Frank says lightly, ignoring the electricity that’s making his skin prickle.

“Sure thing.”

When Ray serves everyone pancakes, he sits down next to Frank, and Frank thinks maybe Mikey will take the seat next to his brother, but instead he eats standing up at the island. Frank figures him still being in the kitchen is a good sign.

“So what brings you here?” Ray asks as he pours syrup over Gerard’s pancakes until he tells him to stop. “Not that I’m not happy to have you! I just— On the phone you said you got a motel room.”

Mitch the cat wanders in then, no doubt smelling the food. Gerard points at him. “He got us kicked out. Apparently a _no pet policy_ means you aren’t allowed to have pets.”

Frank inhales his coffee and almost chokes on it. That wasn’t even that _funny._

“Oh, well, you’re welcome here,” Ray tells him again. “As long as you help us decorate the tree tonight.”

“Oh, I…”

“Don’t tell me you have some writing to do too.”

Gerard tears off a piece of plain pancake and throws it to his cat, who’s waiting patiently by his chair. “Definitely not.”

Well _that_ was a loaded answer if Frank’s ever heard one. The longer he’s around this guy the more questions he has, but not a single clue as to how to ask them.

“Great, so you better be ready by the time we get back.”

“Alright.”

  
  


Not once did Frank plan on being alone with G.A. Way during this trip, but now here he is, sitting across from him while they both nurse their coffees. No amount of imagining meeting him could have prepared Frank for this, he realizes. What does he even talk about? Writing? _Mikey?_ No, definitely not Mikey. He doesn’t want to make things worse.

Suddenly Gerard gets up from the table. “Can you watch Mitch while I run into town?” Then he drops his plate in the sink, his Starbucks cup into the trash, and leaves.

Well then. That worked itself out.

Mitch is sitting where Gerard was now and is staring at Frank with his huge yellow cat eyes. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” Frank says to him, lifting his mug in a salute. And then he too jumps down and trots from the kitchen.

  
  


By the time Gerard returns a while later, Frank has eggnog seeping from his pores, a cat curled up under his arm, and a rough, _rough_ draft of something that might just be viable.

Gerard looks at him when he comes in, arms full of shopping bags, like he didn’t expect him to be there.

“Sorry,” Frank says. “I’m on your bed.” At the sound of his voice Mitch wakes up and makes a little noise, then stretches his arms over Frank’s lap.

“That’s fine.” Gerard’s eyes flit over Frank’s face, his cat, the laptop. He’s so hard to read, and as a writer, Frank sort of hates people like that. “Is there somewhere I can put these?” He lifts the bags.

“Uh, in my room? If you want? Are they presents?”

Gerard’s cheeks go as red as the fire that’s finally starting to die down. “Yeah. I just need to wrap them.”

Even _Gerard_ remembered to buy presents. “Then yeah, I’m staying in the room with the blue walls. I’ll be down here.”

Gerard nods, and clicks his tongue a few rapid times. Mitch’s head perks up again and he launches himself off the couch and follows Gerard up the stairs.

Frank remembers way too late his copy of _The Hesitant Alien_ that’s laying right out in the open. But now there’s nothing he can do about it, so he stares at his laptop screen and pretends like he’s not in dire need of some deodorant all of a sudden. He really hopes Gerard doesn’t think he put it there on purpose. God, he’s so embarrassed, what the hell. He already made a bit of an ass of himself yesterday at the restaurant.

Ray and Mikey come bursting through the front door before Gerard comes back down, thankfully, and behind them they’re lugging a Christmas tree that’s still tied up. They’re both red in the face, but look like they had a good time.

“Wait until you see this bad boy!” Mikey huffs, holding the tip of the tree over his shoulder while Ray carries the trunk. “I’m like a—a tree whisperer or some shit.”

“You definitely are, babe.” Ray drops the trunk once they drag the tree into an empty corner of the living room and wipes sweat from his brow. “Whew! Get any writing done?”

They start tearing off their jackets and gloves, and Frank shuts his laptop. “Some,” he says, hoping not to jinx anything. He glances at the stairs.

“Great!” Ray claps. “I think it’s time for a lunch break. Where’s Gerard?”

Mikey’s face drops like he was hoping Gerard would be gone by the time they got back, but he blessedly doesn’t say anything. It looks like he’s getting better at biting his tongue. Hopefully him and his brother will actually work things out soon.

“Upstairs,” Frank tells them. “He’s putting presents away.”

Now Mikey’s face twists in confusion, and he mouths to himself, _Presents?_ But Ray just smiles that megawatt smile of his. “Oh! Okay, well, I’ll go get started on some food. Who wants sandwiches?” Frank raises his hand.

When it’s just him and Mikey, Frank drops his feet from the coffee table and sits up. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

Mikey is looking at the tree with his brows furrowed to the point where it looks like it hurts. “Yeah, I just— This is weird for me. You know?” He comes over and sits down next to Frank on the couch. “I’ve spent so long being so _angry_ and _frustrated_ with him that I don’t know how to react when he’s _not_ being…”

“Angering and frustrating?”

Mikey sighs, and he runs his hand over his hair. “You have no idea how hard it is keeping my mouth shut around him.”

“Oh, I do,” Frank laughs. “But I think you love Ray more than you hate Gerard.”

Mikey hums. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah? We’re all queer here, aren’t we?”

He snorts. “Touché. But, um, I’m going to—”

There’s footsteps on the stairs, and they both look over to find Gerard coming down with Mitch in his arms. He flicks his chin in the direction of the tree leaning against the wall. “Looks nice.”

There’s a beat where Mikey looks like he doesn’t know what to say to that, and then he opens his mouth and what comes out is, “So where does your cat shit?” Well at least it’s not an insult.

Gerard hikes Mitch a little higher when he starts to slip. “He’s toilet trained.”

 _“He’s—”_ Mikey’s eyes widen. “Of course he is.” He gets up from the couch and goes into the kitchen.

When Gerard drops Mitch to the floor, he’s almost smiling. And Frank is almost smiling back.

  
  


After lunch Ray announces they’re going to decorate the tree, and him and Frank bring down boxes and boxes labeled _Xmas_ from the other spare bedroom. They get the tree into the rusty stand that Ray claims was his grandpa’s, and spend way longer than necessary straightening out all the branches. Gerard is more involved than Frank was expecting; he opens up all the boxes and starts laying the ornaments and tinsel out on the floor for them and shoos Mitch away when he tries to play with anything that rolls. He hands the ornaments to Frank, who in turn hands them to Mikey. Ray stands behind Mikey and tells him where to put them. All in all it feels very…normal.

Until Gerard holds up an ornament and says, “When was this?”

The ornament is a picture frame in the shape of a bulb, and in it is an old picture of Mikey sprawled out on a beach towel. He’s got to be about eighteen, and he’s wearing those godawful Lennon glasses Frank has only had the pleasure of seeing in pictures. Frank laughs out loud when he gets the ornament in his hands, but then Mikey reaches down and takes it from him swiftly. “The Christmas after I graduated high school. Mom and Dad let me spend it at the Shore with friends because they knew how upset I was you didn’t come home.” Gerard is looking down at his lap and Mikey is looking at the picture. Frank feels like his ass is frozen to the floor. “They said you were too busy.”

“I was,” Gerard says quietly, but even he doesn’t sound convinced.

“What, getting your dick wet?”

“Mikey!”

“No.” Mikey shoves the ornament at Ray and turns to face his brother. “I can’t do this. I need _something_ from you, Gerard. Okay? Anything. And don’t go fucking mute like you did at the funeral.”

Gerard looks like a cornered animal, and his ringless hand grips at his knee. There’s a pregnant pause, one where Frank is damn near holding his breath, and then he says, “I’m sorry.” He sounds like all three versions of himself at once.

Mikey throws his hands in the air. “You’re _sorry?_ For what? For leaving without a goodbye? For never picking up the goddamn phone?”

“I said goodbye!”

“And it meant jack shit since you never _gave me a reason!”_

The tension in the air is thick enough to carve up for Christmas dinner, and Frank’s ears are ringing. Ray looks stricken. Slowly, Gerard gets to his feet and leaves, slamming the front door behind him.

“I’m not apologizing for that,” Mikey says into the following silence.

Ray reaches for him. “I know.”

This morning Frank didn’t go after Gerard, but now he feels like he should. So he gets up, sticks his feet into his boots, and slips out the door. He doesn’t see Gerard at first, and an odd spike of worry trickles down the back of his neck—it’s freezing out here and the guy doesn’t have a car—but then he spots him, leaning up against the side of the cottage facing the woods.

“Hey,” he calls after making enough noise with his feet so as not to scare the shit out of him by just appearing. Gerard looks at him, the collar of his coat pulled up around his face so he looks like a vampire. That and he’s as pale as the snow that’s sticking to the laces of Frank’s untied boots. “Need a cigarette?”

“You smoke?” His voice is thick.

Frank shoves his hands in his pockets. Why did he put his shoes on but not a jacket? “No, I just thought I’d offer.”

He thought that might get some sort of laugh out of him, but he just sighs, and his breath plumes in front of his face like a smokescreen. From this angle, he looks like Mikey. He’s sure if Gerard was the type of person to do interviews, Frank would have figured it out a lot sooner. Maybe then he would have been more prepared. He highly doubts it though. “What do you want?”

Frank bites his lip. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

It sounds stupid when he says it, he knows it does, but he’s still taken off guard when Gerard says, his sharp nose wrinkled, “Why?”

This guy isn’t just strange, Frank’s come to realize, he’s also _dense._ But he still has no idea what to say to him. Does he embarrass himself further or does he say something that will piss Mikey off even more? He settles on: “Just trying to be nice,” and heads back inside.

Before he’s out of earshot, he hears Gerard swear to himself.

  
  


Ray is really good at keeping everyone’s spirits up, even if it’s making him kind of manic to do so. He digs out a record of Mikey’s favorite band from the spare bedroom and they crank up the volume on his new record player until the speakers crackle. Mikey is definitely still hurt, but he’s being a good sport about it while they finish decorating the tree. But when they move onto the boxes that have the little vintage statues and garland to wrap around the banister, he lays down on the floor to play with the cat instead.

At this point Frank should be as pissed at Gerard as Mikey is, but still he can’t find any ill feelings towards him outside of, maybe, mild irritation. Because he wrote one of the best-selling children’s fantasy book series’ of all time, because he wrote _The Hesitant Alien._ He may not know him as well as Mikey does, but judging him solely by his writing, he feels like there’s something else there that warrants him the benefit of the doubt. Gerard not only agreed to come down and spend Christmas with them, but he’s also sleeping on their couch when he could have easily found a motel that allows pets.

Yeah, there’s definitely something else.

So that’s why, at the end of the day when Mikey and Ray are upstairs in bed and Gerard still hasn’t returned, Frank decides to wait for him with a cup of hot chocolate. He comes in quietly, a bag from a local art store in his hand, and he looks wrung out. When he sees Frank on the couch he sighs and sits down next to him, leaving a good amount of space in between them. Frank hands him the hot chocolate and Gerard takes it wordlessly. He goes back to writing, and neither of them speaks. There’s just the crackling fire, the clack of Frank’s fingers on his keyboard, and Mitch, purring up a storm between them.

“Why are you being nice to me?”

“Ray is being nice to you too.”

“Ray doesn’t seem like he’s capable of anything else.”

Before Frank can wonder if that was a jab, he sets down his hot chocolate and says, “I don’t think you’re the asshole Mikey is convinced you are.”

Gerard flicks his eyes down to his lap. He reaches over and starts scratching Mitch beneath the chin. He doesn’t say anything, but he definitely seems like he wants to.

Frank decides to push him, just a little. “You can talk to me. If you want.”

“You don’t even know me.”

There’s no way he didn’t see his book sitting on Frank’s desk, but he knows he’s not talking about that. “Sometimes that’s a good thing. What happened?”

Gerard is quiet. He pets his cat, drinks his hot chocolate, looks up at the fire every time it pops.

Frank waits a few moment and then shuts his laptop and stands. He shouldn’t press, or push him. It’s not his place. None of this is his place, but he loves Mikey, so. He can at least nudge him. “Ray is going to try again. So you should talk to Mikey soon.”

Then he pats Mitch on the head, his fingers brushing Gerard’s wrist, and heads upstairs to bed.

  
  


Ray does try again. And today it’s in the form of inviting Gerard to a holiday horror double feature at the tiny movie theater in town. _Gremlins_ and _Black Christmas._ Two of Frank’s favorite movies.

Ray shares a bucket of popcorn with Mikey, and Frank with Gerard, and more than once their hands touch.

It’s going fairly well, if complete silence from both Way brothers can be considered good, but then halfway through _Black Christmas_ Gerard gets up and leaves. Frank figures he’s just heading to the bathroom and he’s not going to follow him _there,_ but what has to be ten minutes passes, so with a glance down the row at Mikey and Ray, he gets up too.

Gerard is sitting on a bench in the lobby, legs crossed, and he’s hunched over a piece of paper held in his palm. When Frank gets closer he sees that he’s sketching something with a piece of charcoal. His fingers are black. “Not a fan of scary movies?” he asks, sitting down.

Gerard looks at him like he knew he was coming and shows him the wrinkled paper. It’s a drawing of Gizmo wrapped up in Christmas lights, and it’s surprisingly good. “Opposite, actually. I just don’t like…” he sighs, and Frank realizes he does that a lot. “I don’t know.”

Frank leaves it alone and sits down to watch Gerard scribble his little drawing. He’s really good, and he remembers the comic book thing. Frank has so much he wants to ask him, most of them _whys._ Why did you leave your brother? Why haven’t you written anything since _The Hesitant Alien?_ Why are you here? Now?

He watches Gerard’s profile, the subtle upturn of his nose, the concentrated purse of his mouth. The furrow between his brows that he just can’t decipher. Not for the first time, Frank thinks, _He’s really attractive._ He shakes his head and hopes Gerard doesn’t notice.

“You’re the reason I’m a writer,” is what comes out of Frank’s mouth, and Gerard looks at him, his light eyes wide and glittering under the dim lobby lights.

“Really?”

He nods. “You put out _Hesitant Alien_ and it just…I don’t know. Spoke to me, I guess.”

And it did; he heard about _The Paper Kingdom_ because one of his old co-workers had a kid that was really into it, so when G.A. Way’s second book hit shelves, and it was marketed as _YA,_ Frank thought, _What the hell._ The guy seemed creative and Frank was in a slump. He could use something new to read.

He read the entire book in one sitting, he remembers. Starting it after dinner and finishing it sometime in the wee hours of the morning, and by the time he was done he completely forgot that the book was supposed to be for teenagers. It’s about a kid who is never referred to by name, kind of an outcast, feeling like they don’t fit in anywhere, who gets abducted by these pink furry aliens one night. Long story short the pink furry aliens take the main character on a journey of self discovery, and by the end of it, they’re the picture of self-confidence. Frank was already comfortable with his identity for years before he picked up the book, so that wasn’t the aspect that made him have an epiphany, it was the fact that _I can do this too._ And so he did, twice. His first two books were Young Adult novels about self discovery and an exploration of sexuality intertwined with his own experiences, and both times he thanked G.A. Way in the acknowledgements.

And then he realized he wants to branch out, like Gerard did with _The Hesitant Alien_ after _The Paper Kingdom,_ and so here he is now. Sitting next to the guy who made him put his crappy retail job in his rear view for good and thinking maybe his writer’s block isn’t going to last much longer.

“You’re also the reason I know Ray, I guess. And Mikey.” He bumps his shoulder gently against Gerard’s. “When I was trying to figure out the cover of my first book, I found out about Ray from a friend, and I hired him to do it. He’s a photographer. Local. I told him I wanted a sort of retro feel? Like maybe a record store or an arcade, and he told me he heard about this comic book store that’s really old school that he thinks would be perfect. So we went, and Mikey was the owner, and the rest is history, I guess.” And now they’re getting _married._

Life is a funny, funny thing. Frank thinks it almost feels like fate, all of it.

Gerard is staring at his finished drawing of Gizmo in his lap, his fingers covered in charcoal. “Wow,” he says, and his voice is raspy.

“Yeah. And it’s all because of you.” _That’s_ what he’s always wanted to tell him. That and, “Thanks.”

Gerard presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. From what Frank can see, his cheeks are red. “I just wish I didn’t have to treat my brother like shit for it to happen.”

Frank doesn’t disagree. “You can talk to me,” he says again. “If it’s easier.”

Gerard drops his hands, and the tiny piece of charcoal rolls to the floor. “What if I’m just an asshole with no ulterior motive?”

“I don’t believe that.”

Gerard squints at him. “Are you a psychologist or something?”

Frank smiles, kind of rueful. “No, but my parents are.” Now that’s a can of worms he definitely doesn’t feel like opening right now. Maybe next Christmas.

Thankfully Gerard doesn’t ask. “How many books have you written?”

Frank sucks in a breath, stretching out his legs across the patterned carpet. “Two, so far. Uh, _Heartbreak in Stereo_ and _Stomachaches._ They’re both,” he gestures vaguely, “in the same vein as _Hesitant Alien._ Coming of age. Teenage angst. Gay themes, you know.”

Gerard looks a little less like he’s going to have a break down in the lobby of this movie theater, which Frank thinks is a good sign. “I’ve heard of them. I haven’t read them though, sorry. Are you writing another one?”

Frank laughs. “That’s no problem, man. And yeah, uh, I’m trying to step away from the YA thing now, you know? Kind of like how you did with the series. I want to spread my little writer’s wings.”

Gerard wipes his hands on his pants and picks up the piece of charcoal to put in his coat pocket. The drawing he still holds onto. He makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Good luck with that. Broadening my horizons is what got me fired. _And_ divorced.”

The bottom falls out of Frank’s stomach. “What?” Gerard looks at him like he didn’t mean to say that. Frank’s not sure what he was expecting to hear from him, but it wasn’t that.

“I, uh.” He scratches the back of his head. “My wife was sort of—in charge. Of what I wrote. When _Paper Kingdom_ was done I was set to start on a new children’s book, but I was having a lot of,” he gestures, not unlike how Frank did just moments ago, _“feelings._ About myself. I did a lot of writing without her knowing, and eventually I felt, you know, good enough to put it all into a book so I put _Hesitant Alien_ together and got it published behind her back.”

Frank stares at him. Gerard stares at Gizmo.

“Long sob story short, she hated it. Hated the fact I went behind her back, hated the—the _gay themes._ She had me fired and I spent Christmas that year signing divorce papers. Haven’t written anything since, and I don’t want to. Anymore. I don’t really think it’s for me.”

Frank resists the urge to put his hand to his heart, but holy shit that’s— That’s _awful._ Even Frank couldn’t write something that cruel. It’s such a stark contrast to the hopeful messages that’s underlying in all of Gerard’s stories. Gerard uses his thumb to smudge some of the drawing, blending the charcoal into the paper, then he hands it to Frank. Frank takes it. “What’s this for?”

Gerard shrugs. “A thank you, I guess. I didn’t know why I agreed to come when Ray called me last week, but talking to you made me realize that I…want to fix things. I guess I knew that maybe. At least subconsciously.”

Despite the bomb Gerard just dropped, Frank smiles. “Well, you’re welcome. But you still need to talk to Mikey. He’s my best friend, so you’re sort of on my shit list by default until you do.”

Gerard smiles back, crooked and small but definitely genuine. _Fate._ “Is that kind of like the naughty list?”

Frank throws his head back in a laugh, and his hair brushes the poster they’re sitting underneath. _“Yes._ The two of you better work things out or you’re getting coal in your stocking.”

The smile wilts a little bit, but it doesn’t disappear entirely. “It’s all up to Mikey.”

As if summoned, the doors to the theater they were in open up and out streams the audience, Mikey and Ray taking up the back. Gerard straightens when he sees them. “Hey,” Frank says, getting up. He sticks the drawing of Gizmo in his pocket. “How was it?”

“I’m sleeping with the lights on tonight,” Ray says. He’s holding Mikey’s hand and gripping his arm tight with his other one. Mikey starts laughing and Ray hits him. “It’s not funny!”

Gerard gets up too. “Did you find out that it’s based on a true story?” Frank looks at him. He looks sheepish, like he’s still not sure if he’s allowed to talk to his brother, to engage in conversation with them.

When Mikey doesn’t say anything, suddenly occupied by a poster for some action flick that’s coming out on the wall, Ray says, _“Yes._ Did they really never find the guy?”

Frank and Gerard shrug in unison. Ray moans like Billy is going to be giving him a call, and Mikey laughs again and starts tugging him towards the door. “Let’s go finish decorating,” he says. “That’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t know, babe. Christmas lights…”

Frank turns to Gerard. “Ready to go?”

Gerard is biting the inside of his cheek so hard he looks like he’s going to chew right through. He’s watching Ray and Mikey’s backs. “Yeah.”

Frank pats him on the shoulder, and they follow after.

In the car on the way back to the cottage, Frank can’t stop looking at Gerard. He doesn’t know why. His eyes feel pulled to him, like a moth to a flame. Ray keeps trying to make conversation, namely about the movies they just saw, and Frank is the only one that’s responding. He doesn’t think he notices the tension that’s emanating from both Way brothers, how rigidly they’re both sitting, Mikey in the passenger seat, Gerard behind Ray. Frank watches Gerard pick at a thread in his coat sleeve, clenching and unclenching his jaw.

Mikey is the first to speak when there’s a lull, and Frank isn’t all that surprised. “You know, Gee,” he starts, quiet, hard. _Gee._ “I waited for you to call.” Gerard grips his knee. “When you published _The Hesitant Alien_ I was so—so _surprised._ I was like _“Holy shit, he’s queer too, I never knew,”_ and I thought maybe you’d finally give me a call. So we could talk about it.”

Gerard shuts his eyes. Frank, haltingly, reaches over and pats him on the arm. Gerard’s eyes fly open so fast Frank startles and tears his hand away, but he doesn’t look mad, just surprised.

Mikey continues. Ray is holding his hand over the center console. “For everyone listening, he didn’t. And then Dad died, like, a month later, and still no call. You didn’t even talk to me at the funeral. I really thought that might be the turning point. You know? Because I know how—how he was. To you. To us.”

Gerard audibly swallows. “I’m not like you. I could never…ignore them.”

“I know.”

They’re quiet. Ray pulls into the driveway of the cottage and puts the car in park, but he doesn’t take the keys out of the ignition.

“That isn’t everything,” Gerard says quietly.

“I know. Ray, do you mind if we have the car?”

“You know you don’t have to ask.” Ray leans over and kisses him. Frank and Gerard both try to look away, and in turn end up staring right at each other. Frank nods, and he’s not sure what he’s trying to convey, but Gerard gets it anyway; he nods back.

Frank and Ray get out and go into the cottage. While he’s feeding Mitch some of the Fancy Feast that Gerard stuck in the cabinet, Ray is watching the car sitting in the driveway from the living room window. He turns away when Mikey pulls out. He runs a hand through his hair. “I really hope they work things out.”

Frank comes up to him and claps him on the shoulder. “They will. Gerard said that’s why he came.”

Ray looks at him. His eyes are hopeful but the furrow between his eyebrows is sad. “Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. This will be the Christmas you planned.” Frank crosses his fingers behind his back, but he doesn’t think he’s got anything to worry about either. Gerard is proving to be a decent guy. Maybe even the guy that Frank always imagined he was.

Ray lets out a breath. “Good.”

“Wanna finish decorating? I’ll make cookies.”

He looks at him suspiciously. “You can’t bake.”

Frank laughs on his way to the kitchen. “I never said they’d be good.”

He uses a recipe he saw on the Food Network a while ago, and they turn out less than ideal, but they’re edible and that’s all that matters. They finish decorating the cottage with all the decorations Mrs. Toro left behind before deciding to have Christmas down the shore with her seashell-shaped bulbs and wreaths that look like palm tree leaves. Frank unearths a fake sprig of mistletoe and hangs it up in the doorway into the kitchen when Ray isn’t looking. The only thing they don’t put up is the angel on top of the tree, saving it for Christmas Eve as is their tradition, and the lights on the outside of the cottage; it’s been too cold and windy for that, but the sun is supposed to be out tomorrow, so Ray tells him he’ll do it then.

Mikey and Gerard return when dinner is coming out of the oven, and they’re both tear-stained and sniffly. But they’re smiling and their shoulders are touching, and while Frank feels all light and airy looking at them, Ray looks like he could burst into tears too at any second. He goes over and pulls Mikey into a bone-crushing hug.

Gerard comes up next to Frank, his arms crossed, and now _their_ shoulders are touching. He smells like cologne and something warm, like cloves. He smiles at Frank, then puts his arm tentatively around his back. Frank’s breath leaves his body in one fell swoop.

“Thanks. Again.” He rubs Frank’s shoulder and drops his arm quickly. Frank’s entire body starts tingling.

“Don’t gotta thank me, man,” he says weakly. He clears his throat. Ray is telling Mikey about the shitty cookies in the kitchen, and they start off to get some, pinkies interlocked. Gerard’s hand twitches against his own. “I’m glad everything’s…good?”

Gerard steps away, scratching the back of his neck and taking the warmth with him. “Not good, but. Better.”

“It’s a start.”

He smiles, wide and lopsided, his nose pink and his cheeks blotchy. “Yeah.”

A weird feeling unfurls in Frank’s belly, one he’s written about plenty of times, and his breath gets caught in his throat. “Uh. Cookies? Want some? They’re not so bad if you chase them with eggnog.”

Gerard’s cheeks get even redder. His eyes are so pretty. “Yeah, sure. What kind are they?”

“Open to interpretation.”

He laughs, and Frank thinks it’s the best sound he’s ever heard.

  
  


Frank barely recognizes Mikey now, in the best way possible. He’s loud and obnoxious and starts a food fight after dinner when Ray suggests they make more cookies. There’s still some tension between him and Gerard, but overall it’s like they’re completely different people. While Gerard is still kind of quiet, he teases his little brother and throws chocolate chips at him and dances with his cat when Frank puts on an Andrews Sisters record and he thinks this might be the best holiday he’s had yet. Christmas was never this fun for Frank growing up, and it definitely beats the Christmases with Ray’s family over the years; if Mrs. Toro caught any of them having a food fight, she’d whip out the wooden spoon.

They eat and drink and make a mess of the kitchen, and just be merry. It’s great.

Mikey is the first one to break off, running upstairs to take a shower and get the flour out of his hair. Ray snaps a dish towel at him, but doesn’t stop him. Mikey likes cleaning dust, not icing off of cabinet handles. Gerard goes next when they hear the shower shut off, carrying his pajamas upstairs. Mitch follows closely behind, still licking his chops from the hoovering he was doing of the floor all afternoon. Frank helps Ray finish cleaning up the kitchen.

“Things seem better,” he comments, and Ray sighs happily.

“Yeah. I’m so glad.” He throws the leftovers in tupperware containers and puts them in the fridge. “Maybe Mikey will make him his best man. I really didn’t want to have to fight over you.”

Frank laughs. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Toro. Let’s just get through the engagement first.” Ray makes a noise like he’s gonna throw up, and Frank laughs even harder. “Go to bed, man. You need your energy for all those lights you’re gonna string up tomorrow. Your _fiancé-to-be_ is waiting for you.” Ray puts his hands in his hair and Frank slaps him on the back on his way out of the kitchen.

Frank makes two cups of hot chocolate when he thinks the kitchen is clean enough, and puts them on the coffee table in the living room. He heads upstairs to change, and remembers the drawing of Gizmo in his pocket. He takes it out carefully, trying not to smudge the charcoal anymore than it already is and tucks it into his copy of _The Hesitant Alien._ Smiling stupidly to himself, he grabs his laptop and leaves.

And runs right into Gerard coming out of the bathroom.

“Oof!” Gerard says, dropping his clothes onto the floor. His hair is wet and scraggly, his _Star Wars_ shirt damp around the neckline, and he smells like Frank’s shampoo. And Frank is staring again. He seems to be good at that.

“Shit, sorry.”

They bend over at the same time, their heads almost bumping, and Frank helps pile Gerard’s clothes back into his hands. The steam coming out of the bathroom is making Frank sweat a little. At least that’s what he tells himself that’s what it is.

“You’re fine,” Gerard tells him. “I should’ve looked both ways.”

Frank laughs awkwardly. He tries his hardest not to look at the tiny bit of stubble dusting Gerard’s jaw. “Uh, I made hot chocolate. If you’re in the mood for more sugar.”

“Always,” he says easily. “Come on, Mimi.” He clicks his tongue in that weird way cat owners do and Mitch comes out, tail up. “Downstairs.” Mitch listens, and starts trotting down the stairs. They follow after him.

Frank sits on the loveseat with his laptop and his hot chocolate as Gerard makes up his temporary bed. Then he sits down with a sketchbook and a set of markers and pats the cushion next to him. Frank gets up and comes over.

“What’s that?” he asks like he doesn’t know. He bites his tongue hard enough to bleed. He’s not usually this…embarrassing. Really, he’s not. It’s all Gerard’s fault.

Gerard flips the book open to a drawing of something that looks like an anthropomorphic monkey with hot pink fur. Frank recognizes it as the aliens from _The Hesitant Alien._ It’s a little different than what he imagines when reading it, but hey, Gerard is too. “Just some sketches. I got back into it after—you know.”

He flips to the next page, and it’s a collage of Mitches drawn in different mediums. Pencil, charcoal, marker. He gives Frank enough time to take it all in before he’s moving on. There’s still life drawings, watercolor paintings of Mitch and other cats and animals, sketches of movie characters and people Frank doesn’t recognize. And they’re all really good.

“You’re amazing,” Frank tells him, almost breathless. “You’re a fantastic writer, but holy shit. These are great.”

Gerard blushes all the way up to his ears and flips to a blank page. “Thanks. I always thought I was a better artist than writer. I definitely enjoy it more. Sorry.”

Frank smiles and leans into him. “You don’t have to apologize. Do you want to— I mean, like. Are you going to—” He has no idea how to word this without overstepping. But Gerard saves him.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I was always able to express myself better through art, you know? Comics and stuff.”

Frank watches the side of his face as he gets more comfortable, picks a marker from his pack, smooths his hand over the crisp white page. His hair is starting to dry, and it looks kind of curly. Frank’s fingers twitch. “Maybe you should. I’ve got connections. I’m pretty sure Mikey does too.”

Gerard uncaps the marker. He doesn’t look at him. “I have connections too. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.” He does look at him then, and his eyes are the same color as the Christmas tree. The colorful lights reflect on his pale skin. “We’ll see.”

Frank can’t help the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. “Well you have at least one excited fan.” Then he cringes, but Gerard just laughs in that loud, brash way of his.

“Thanks. I wonder if Mikey would want to do it with me.”

Frank hums. “He’s pretty happy with the shop he’s running, but who knows? I wouldn’t say it’s off the table.”

Gerard nods, and hunches around his sketchbook like he did with his Gizmo drawing at the movie theater. Frank recognizes that the conversation is over for now and props his legs up on the coffee table, being careful not to knock over either of their hot chocolates. Mitch appears from wherever he was and gets comfortable on the loveseat. Frank watches Gerard sketch something out on his paper with the black marker, brushes as light as if he were painting, and his fingers twitch again. He turns his attention to his laptop screen.

The whisper of Gerard’s markers on thick paper, the clack of Frank’s keyboard, Mitch purring up a storm and his claws plucking at fabric as he kneads the cushion, rain lightly hitting the windows. It all blends in to form a white noise that propels Frank, that lights the fire in his belly. As he types he feels like he swallowed the lights strung up around the tree, inhaled the dying embers in the fireplace. And Gerard’s smell, his presence and warmth, possesses Frank. As he writes fifty words and then a hundred, two hundred, three, he wonders how he was ever able to write under any other circumstances. Reading Gerard’s writing and having his book next to him while he sat working at his kitchen table or at the library doesn’t compare to having the real thing sitting right next to him.

When Frank writes, he always imagines himself knitting something. A blanket maybe. Stitch by stitch, growing longer and longer as he goes. And he soon realizes this particular blanket is turning into a quilt, and every patch screams _Gerard._

He writes about a writer. A children’s book author who fell from grace. Frank omits any incriminating details, adds way more dramatics, but it’s undeniably about Gerard. But it’s good. It’s really damn good. It’s exactly what he wanted to write after being branded a YA author.

He eventually realizes Gerard is watching him when he breaks concentration to take a sip of his room temperature hot chocolate. Frank feels his entire body flush when he notices, and resists the urge to close his laptop. “Hey.”

Gerard bites back a grin. “Hey. You were really in the zone.”

“Yeah, sorry, were you saying something?”

He looks amused. “No. Just watching. People are really interesting when they’re concentrating so hard.”

Now Frank feels like he swallowed the entire fireplace and then some. But he definitely knows what he means. He realizes writers and artists are similar in a lot of ways. “Yeah. I do a lot of people watching too. It’s fun.”

“It helps when the view is nice.”

Frank opens his mouth, then promptly closes it. Gerard does the same. Then they both look away, laughing in that breathy, embarrassed sort of way. Frank pokes a couple more keys, Gerard makes a few more strokes with his marker.

Then Mitch jumps off the love seat suddenly like someone lit a match under his tail and starts crying. “What’s the matter?” Gerard asks him. Mitch answers and jumps up onto his lap, looking at Gerard with those big yellow eyes. “Wanna go bed? Huh? Nanite?”

Frank watches the interaction with warm cheeks, then shuts his laptop. “I’ll let you be. You’re probably tired.”

“Yeah,” Gerard says. “Thanks for the hot chocolate and— Yeah.”

“Sure.” Frank is usually good with his words (he’s a published author for crying out loud), but meeting Gerard has reduced his vocabulary to his high school self’s, when he’d write notes in class to girls that said shit along the lines of _“Ur cute. Wanna hang?”_ “I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah.” Gerard smiles, flashing those teeth that are probably the size of Mitch’s. “Do you mind taking—?” He holds out his mug by the handle, and Frank takes it carefully. “Thanks.”

Frank snorts. “I’m going to have to start charging you soon. I don’t think anyone’s ever thanked me so much.” Gerard goes red and looks down at his sketchbook. Frank can’t tell what it is. He goes into the kitchen and puts the two mugs in the sink to be washed in the morning. If he’s lucky, Ray will be up before him.

When he goes back into the living room Gerard is getting comfortable on the couch with his borrowed blankets and the pillow he brought along with him. Mitch is waiting patiently on the arm of the couch. “‘Night,” Frank says on his way to the stairs.

Gerard looks up and smiles. Mitch meows. “‘Night.”

When Frank heads up to his room with his laptop under his arm, he doesn’t think he stops smiling until he falls asleep. And even then he’s not convinced the muscles in his face relax.

  
  


It’s two days until Christmas. Frank _has_ to buy his presents today.

He figures he’d get everything done faster if he went by himself, but then Gerard offers to come, and Frank’s stomach goes all warm and tingly in a way that tells him he didn’t really want to go by himself anyway.

They leave Ray and Mikey to put up the lights on the outside of the cottage and any other sort of decorations they might find upstairs and head to town together in Ray’s car. Gerard’s already bought all of his presents, and he doesn’t know Ray’s family, so he’s quiet for the most part, just there to keep Frank company. It’s nice. They go in and out of mom and pop shops, small businesses, picking out tchotchkes and cards and spending way too long in the Hallmark store pressing buttons on all the stupid little animatronics and making each other laugh. Gerard helps him pick out the perfect gifts for Mikey, despite the fact that Frank’s known him for a while now, and that ends them up in a record store across town for hours. While there Gerard starts to come out of his shell more, and it warms the chill clinging to Frank’s fingers. It’s like the invisible weight on his shoulders has finally fallen away completely.

They get lunch at a café that smells so much like pinecones they have to eat outside in the cold, but hanging around Gerard is like having your own personal space heater. The guy is just so _warm,_ inside and out. He’s funny and kind and has a laugh that can make heads turn, and so unlike the person he was pretending to be when he first showed up. _This_ is who Frank imagined G.A. Way to be.

After they eat, chewing on cinnamon toothpicks like a couple of old timey mob bosses, arms weighed down by a couple hundred dollars worth of Christmas presents, they end up in front of a hole-in-the-wall bookstore, and the display in the window is _The Paper Kingdom._ It makes sense; most places that sell books usually put up displays of the series for the holidays, right next to _Harry Potter._ But there’s no _Harry Potter_ in this window display, just _Paper Kingdom,_ surrounded by snowflakes made from colorful construction paper and a blanket of fake snow that could double as cottonwebs during Halloween. Gerard is looking at the display like an old friend.

“You know I designed all the covers?”

“Really?” Frank looks at the covers of the books, the white background and the black lines that form a skyline of castles when you put them all side by side.

“Yeah. _Hesitant Alien_ too.” He hums and goes in, holding the door open for Frank.

The bookstore is small and cluttered and smells faintly of mildew, and Frank loves it. Gerard seems to like it too, judging by the way he’s looking around with a small smile on his face.

“Afternoon, fellas.” An older man appears from behind one of the shelves. They both say hi. “Can I hold onto your bags while you look around?”

“Yeah, sure.” Frank takes the other bags from Gerard and hands them all to the man, who disappears again. When he turns back to Gerard, he finds him writing in one of the books from the window display. He snaps it shut before Frank can see what he wrote, and puts it back with a small smile. “Wanna look around?”

“Sure.”

They head to the back of the store, objectively where all the best stuff always is, and it’s dark and cramped and strangely intimate. Instrumental Christmas music tinkles through the overhead speakers, almost too quiet to hear. They find the Young Adult section, and Gerard swings into it with a glance back at Frank. They have to stand side by side in the skinny aisle, but Frank doesn’t particularly mind. His eyes catch on _The Hesitant Alien_ before he notices the copy of _Heartbreak_ _in Stereo_ stuck right next to it. Gerard sees the two books at the same time Frank does, and they both laugh softly.

“I think they knew we were coming,” Gerard says, as quiet as if they were in a library. “Ray took this?” He drags his fingers down the matte cover, over the picture of Mikey’s comic shop. It hits Frank that Gerard has never been to Mikey’s shop. He thinks he’d really like it.

“Yeah.”

“I like it.” Then he reaches for Frank’s book and flips to the acknowledgements page. Frank shuffles his feet, the back of his neck tingling along with his cheeks. _“Lastly, thanks to G.A. Way. I hope you never read this._ Uh oh.”

“Give me _that.”_ Frank grabs the book out of his hands, laughing, but it falls to the floor, thudding dully against the old carpet, and Gerard starts laughing too.

“No, wait, I don’t own a copy,” Gerard says, getting down on his knees and trying to shove Frank gently out of the way when he reaches for the book.

“I have a boxful at my apartment.” Frank gets to the book first, and snatches it up off the floor. Gerard is left kneeling, staring up at Frank with his bright eyes and even brighter cheeks. Frank is standing, and their positions make him flush.

“I wanted that one,” Gerard says, his voice catching a little. “It’s half off.”

Frank bursts out laughing and Gerard tries to shush him, grabbing onto the bottom of his jacket and pulling him to the floor with him. Frank goes down easily, his back hitting against the bookshelves. Gerard’s knees are pressed into Frank’s leg, one hand on the book, the other still holding onto Frank’s jacket. They’re both hiccuping with subdued laughter, and Frank realizes all of a sudden that he really wants to kiss him. Gerard’s really close. Close enough that Frank can smell his aftershave. Gerard leans forward a little, the hand on Frank’s book moving to his arm.

And then Frank’s phone rings.

Gerard falls back on his haunches, but he’s still smiling. Frank sucks in a deep breath, willing his stupid heart to stop beating so hard, and answers. “Hello?”

_“Hey, Frank, it’s Mikey.”_

Frank frowns and pulls the phone away from his ear. Ray’s name lights up the screen. “Hey, what’s up? You okay?” Gerard cocks his head in question.

_“Yeah, Ray sort of fell off the ladder and busted his arm.”_

Frank’s heart drops to his stomach. _“What?_ Is he okay?” Gerard’s eyes go a little wide and he stands, helping Frank up too. He takes the book from Frank’s hands and puts it back on the shelf next to his own.

_“Yeah, he’s getting X-rayed now. It’s not bad. We just need a ride back to the house.”_

God, only Mikey Way would be so calm when his significant other lands himself in the hospital. Frank would be shitting bricks, whether it was bad or not. “Shit, yeah, we’re on our way, just stay put.”

 _“Thanks, dude. I’ll text you the address.”_ And then he hangs up.

Frank shoves his phone in his pocket and him and Gerard start for the front of the store. “What happened?” Gerard asks when they get their bags back from the owner.

“Ray fell off the ladder and hurt his arm. They’re at the hospital.”

“Shit.”

“That’s what I said.”

Mikey’s text comes through under Ray’s name when Frank’s pulling away from the bookstore and Gerard reads it to him. The hospital is just down the road, small, like something you’d see in a Hallmark movie when the main character spends Christmas away from home in some small town. In fact—this whole trip is starting to resemble a Hallmark movie. Including whatever just happened at the bookstore. Or, _almost_ happened. Frank glances over at Gerard, who’s looking out the window and drumming his fingers on his knee. Frank really wishes he was able to read him.

Mikey’s sitting in the waiting room just inside the revolving doors when they go in, lounging back with his legs thrown out and drinking coffee. He sits up when he sees them. “Hey.”

“Is Ray okay?” Frank asks, a pang of worry going through his chest. “Why are you out here?”

Mikey rolls his eyes and hands Frank his coffee to try. It’s hot as hell and overly sweet but somehow hospital coffee always tastes better. “I told you he’s fine. He’s just freaking out so I had to get out of the room for a while. I called you and then checked him out. And got coffee.”

“Freaking out?” Gerard asks. Mikey looks at him briefly like he’s not going to answer him, but thinks better of it, thankfully.

He gets up, taking his coffee back. He doesn’t offer it to Gerard though. “He thinks Christmas is ruined. He’s so fucking dramatic.”

Gerard snorts and Frank relaxes. If this is anything like a Hallmark movie, Christmas will work out just fine, no matter the bumps along the way. He looks at Gerard again, standing next to him. He sees him biting the inside of his cheek and wonders what he’s thinking.

“Anyways, you guys didn’t have to come in. I’ll go get him and we’ll be out in a second.”

Mikey disappears down a hallway with his steaming hot coffee, sipping at it like it’s lukewarm, and Frank and Gerard head back outside into the car. Once inside, seatbelts back on and heat blasting, Frank is about to bring up the almost-kiss, the words sitting right there on his tongue, but Gerard starts talking first.

“You know Mikey’s planning to propose?”

_“What?”_

Gerard finally looks at him. He’s smiling. “Yeah, he told me yesterday. He said he’s going to do it on Christmas when Ray’s family is over.”

“You’re kidding,” Frank laughs. “Are you serious?”

“What do you mean?” Gerard asks. “Should he…not?”

“No, no.” Frank shakes his head. “Ray told me _he’s_ going to propose on Christmas.”

Gerard throws his head back and guffaws, clapping his hands together. “Oh man. Let’s not say anything.”

“God, we have to say _something._ Right?”

Gerard turns his head on the headrest of the passenger seat. His eyes are bright. “No we don’t. I think it’s funny. Hey—let’s bet on it.”

“What?”

He puts his hand out. Frank looks at his long artist’s fingers and swallows. “Fifty bucks says Mikey’s gonna do it first.”

Frank takes his hand. It’s big and warm and kind of sweaty. “Guess I gotta go with Ray. But he’s going to do it first. Trust me on that.”

Gerard shakes. “We’ll see.”

They hold each other’s hand for longer than is necessary for bet-making, but neither of them says anything.

When Ray climbs into the backseat, Mikey next to him, he looks grumpy as hell. His hair is tied back and his right arm is in one of those blue and white hospital-issued slings and he’s frowning.

“Hey, Ray,” Gerard says lightly, looking behind his seat at him. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Ray grumbles like a petulant child. Frank covers up his laugh with a cough and he pulls out of the hospital parking lot.

“If you’re this PO’d now, I can’t wait to see you when the painkillers wear off,” Mikey says, and there’s the distinct sound of Ray hitting him. Everyone laughs and Ray whines. Gerard jolts like his seat was kicked.

“It’s not funny, guys! How the hell am I supposed to cook Christmas dinner now?”

“Did you forget about us?” Frank asks, looking at him in the rear view mirror.

“You can’t cook! Mikey scorched our nicest pot when he was trying to boil water for pasta!”

“Hey, how do you know I can’t cook?” Gerard asks.

“Can you?”

Gerard catches Frank’s eye and they both stifle a laugh. “No.”

Ray makes a sound like a dying animal and Mikey tries to comfort him the whole way back to the cottage. When they get there, the ladder is still leaning up against the front of the cottage, half of the lights are hanging from the roof, and there’s a very Ray-sized imprint in the snow on the lawn.

While Mikey is setting Ray up on the recliner Gerard helps Frank carry all his bags upstairs to his room. They set them up on the floor in the corner next to Gerard’s, an arsenal of tissue paper and hand-drawn logos, and while Frank is taking off his shoes and jacket he watches Gerard, who’s at the desk rubbing his thumb along one of the carvings.

“Thanks. For coming with me today.”

Gerard looks over and smiles softly. “You’re welcome. I, uh. I had fun.”

Frank finds himself drifting closer to him, the old wood flooring creaking underfoot. “Me too.” He wants to talk about what happened. He wants to talk about it _so bad._ “Listen, G—”

“Fr—”

They both stop and laugh, just like at the bookstore. Frank’s ears are hot. “You first.”

Gerard comes closer too. He reaches out and flicks the zipper on Frank’s jacket. He won’t look him in the eye. He doesn’t say anything else either, just leans in little by little, and Frank does too.

And then, because maybe Fate hates them after all, Mikey calls their names from the bottom of the stairs.

Gerard sighs, but he’s still smiling, and even though Frank is frustrated beyond belief, he smiles too. “Oh well,” he says. “Let’s go see what he wants.”

Gerard brushes his hand along Frank’s, and it could’ve easily been an accident, but Frank isn’t that naive. “Yeah.”

What Mikey wanted was for Frank to keep Ray company while he and Gerard finish putting up the lights outside. “Be careful,” Frank tells them from the front door, and they both wave him off. He watches them for a few moments, how easily they seem to have fallen back into their brotherly groove, and smiles.

Ray is bundled up under a blanket they brought from home, his legs stretched across the footrest, and frowning like whatever movie he’s watching on his laptop has personally offended him. Frank hops up on the left arm of the couch and all but drapes himself over the top of Ray’s curly head. He sees he’s watching _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ on Netflix. He lets a couple minutes pass before he decides to say anything.

“You know everything’s gonna be fine, right?”

Ray rubs his socked feet together. “Is it?”

Frank puts his arm around him, being careful of his sling; partly so he doesn’t fall from his precarious perch, partly for comfort. “Come on. You just hurt your arm, you didn’t, like, burn the cottage down. And even if you did, we’d just order out. Maybe go to Cracker Barrel.” Ray snorts. “Seriously. We’ll all help out. Everything will be _fine.”_

“Even proposing?”

“Okay, now you’re just being stupid. You broke your elbow, not your leg.”

“I didn’t _break it.”_

“So what are you worrying about?” Frank asks. “You can open a ring box with one hand, right?”

Ray sighs. “I guess.”

“Great.” Frank kisses the top of his head, his hair going up his nose. “Oh, I love this scene, no more talking.”

Ray laughs and turns the volume up.

  
  


By the time Frank wakes up the next morning, to Mitch trying to bite at his toes for some reason, his chest feels like it’s going to start caving in.

Him and Gerard didn’t get another second alone together all night, between Ray walking them through dinner and not wanting to leave the patient too long lest he starts to become cranky again. Frank stayed up for hours after everyone went to bed staring at the ceiling in his room and wondering if he should go downstairs—maybe make some hot chocolate. But he didn’t, so it’s probably his fault. Gerard’s too, since he never came upstairs. It takes two to tango, after all.

When he gets up he takes Mitch downstairs with him. Everyone’s in the kitchen already, and Mikey’s making breakfast for once, with Ray watching like a hawk from behind. Dinner wasn’t a complete disaster last night, which is good. “Good morning, gentlemen,” Frank greets, and drops Mitch to the floor. “I think the cat is hungry.”

“He’s a filthy liar.” Gerard takes a sip of his coffee from where he sits at the breakfast nook and pats his lap. Mitch jumps up and makes himself comfortable on his _Star Wars_ pants. He looks so soft, his hair tousled and eyes still sleep-puffy and Frank just wants to go over there and take his face in his hands and _kiss him_ already. “I just fed him.”

“All cats are the same,” Mikey says from the stove. It smells like he’s making french toast. Ray reaches around him and turns the stove down, completely ignoring Frank. He looks as concentrated as if he were performing open heart surgery and not backseat cooking.

Frank grabs a mug from the cabinet and pours himself a cup of coffee. When he goes over to the breakfast nook, Gerard slides down the booth to make room for him. “Hey,” he says in that godsent voice of his.

Frank can’t help the smile that overtakes his face. “Morning.”

“Why are you looking at each other like that?” Mikey asks loudly from the stove. He doesn’t sound angry, or anything like how he was in the bathroom at the restaurant. He just sounds like an annoying little brother, and despite the fact that Frank’s entire body is blushing now, he loves seeing Mikey like this.

“Babe—focus,” scolds Ray, and Mikey turns back to the french toast Frank sucks his lips into his mouth and scratches Mitch’s head. Gerard makes a noise that sounds like a laugh into his coffee. He smells like deodorant and sleep and Frank’s sort of screwed, isn’t he?

  
  


Frank isn’t sure what made him think he’d get anything productive done today (finishing his pitch, getting Gerard alone finally so they can address whatever is happening between them). Ray tells them like he’s a teacher telling his class they have homework over the weekend that they need to spend the day preparing for tomorrow, which means getting the food ready and cleaning the cottage like it isn’t still sparkling and “Frank, you need to wrap your presents and get them under the tree as soon as you can, okay?”

So the day passes in cooking lessons and bottles of Clorox and telling Ray to chill out and stolen glances and accidental-on-purpose touches. Frank doesn’t even get to wrap his presents until later that evening, and even then Gerard can’t even help because he and Mikey got into a (small) argument over something or another and Ray sent them out to ShopRite together to work it out and pick up some things they needed for tomorrow.

They navigate their way through dinner when they get back, and when the dishes are clean and the angel is secured on top of the tree and Frank is about to ask Gerard if he wants to take a walk, Ray says, “So I have a surprise.”

“I’m not watching another Martha Stewart video,” Mikey says, digging at his teeth with a toothpick from where he’s leaning up against the island.

Ray laughs and rubs his back with the hand that isn’t out of commission. His ears are still a little red and his hair frazzled with stress, but Frank notes that he finally looks like he believes that tomorrow won’t be a complete disaster. “No. No more Martha. There’s, uh, actually going to be a little thing in town tonight and I thought we could go? As a thank-you for everything you guys are doing for me.”

Mikey _aw’s_ and kisses him. “You don’t have to thank us. I don’t know about these two jerk-offs but I love you.”

The red spreads from Ray’s ears to his cheeks. “I love you too.”

“Me too, man,” Frank says from the breakfast nook, and Gerard agrees next to him, albeit a little awkwardly since he did only meet him the other day. “What kind of thing is it?”

“It’s a parade thing,” Ray tells him, adjusting the strap of the sling around his neck. Mikey reaches up and helps him, and the gesture is so minute, so casual, but something unfurls in Frank’s belly like a flower blooming. Gerard’s foot brushes his under the table.

  
  


The parade-thing is exactly what Frank was expecting from a town this small. They head to Main Street and park—because life is a funny, funny thing—right outside the bookstore. All the lights are off, but the bright covers of _The Paper Kingdom_ are still visible and stark, a bright beacon on the otherwise dark street. Nobody notices the display except Frank. Not even Gerard, who got out of the car onto the sidewalk. Or maybe he does; Frank still struggles to read his face. Whether or not Gerard notices his books in the window, whether he’s thinking about their near-something in the aisles of the bookstore or more recently in Frank’s room, he looks otherwise occupied.

They follow the ambling crowd of townspeople to the square, which is nothing more than a small park with a few benches and a rickety-looking gazebo that some kids are trying to drag snow into to build a snowman. Some people have set up folding chairs on the curb, some are standing, and since they came empty-handed they wedge themselves between a family with a couple young kids held on their shoulders and hips, and two teen girls that definitely look like they’re on a date. Frank catches their eye and smiles, then turns his body towards Gerard to give them some semblance of privacy.

A man comes down the line with an industrial-sized thermos and a stack of Dixie cups and pours them all shots of hot chocolate (emphasis on the hot; Frank burns his tongue and Gerard grins at him; he’s almost tempted to take another sip). They don’t have to wait long for things to kick off, thankfully. Frank doesn’t mind the cold so much, the wind that bites at his cheeks, but standing shoulder to shoulder with Gerard and not knowing what to say or how to say it is becoming almost unbearable. Never before in his life—sans his recent bout of writer’s block—has he been at such a loss for words.

Music starts blaring from some hidden speakers, tinny and hollow-sounding, and what looks like an off-brand version of the Hell’s Angels comes putzing down the street on motorcycles decked out in tinsel and fairy lights. They wave to the gathering crowd as they go by, revving their engines when everyone cheers. The motorcyclists are followed by a group of girl scouts, their decorated sashes straining over their puffy winter coats and their smiling faces hidden by the scarves their moms definitely made them wear. There’s gymnasts that do cartwheels and backflips and what looks like it’s supposed to be a synchronized dance number to Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime”, a group that waves around Christmas-colored ribbons, a marching band that plays over the music coming from the speakers. It’s not long at all before someone is announcing Santa is on his way, and the three of them laugh, half embarrassed, half delighted, when Mikey does a very loud _Elf_ impression, making the kids next to him absolutely lose their little minds.

Santa Claus is preceded by eight real life reindeer, and one of the kids on Mikey’s side starts crying because Rudolph isn’t here, and Mikey shifts closer to Ray, who pushes into Gerard, and like a domino effect him and Frank end up almost on top of one another. When Santa and Mrs. Claus go by in their (surprisingly ornate) sleigh, a cute little older couple with rosy cheeks that look like they’ve been doing this for years, Santa gives Gerard a wink and he turns to Frank, smiling.

“Maybe I’m not getting coal in my stocking after all,” he says over the din of the music and cheering and Frank really wants to kiss him.

And he’s about to, he really is, fuck it, but a firework explodes overhead, startling everyone and their mother.

Gerard’s hand ends up around Frank’s.

Neither of them say anything. Gerard is watching the fireworks light up the night sky, his pale eyes reflecting them like a mirror. Next to him Mikey has his arm around Ray’s shoulders. The two girls on Frank’s right have their heads leaning on each other’s. And Gerard is holding his hand but it’s not _enough._ He tugs on his arm and Gerard looks over and just as Michael Buble’s starts no homo-ing Santa Claus he throws his Dixie cup into the snow and kisses him.

Frank’s written about this moment enough times to think that he knows how it goes, but the world doesn’t melt away, everything doesn’t turn to white noise around them, they’re not left standing alone in some metaphorical third plane of existence. They’re crowded on both sides by friends and strangers and the fireworks are making Frank’s brain rattle around in his skull like a pinball machine. It’s cold and windy and some toddler not too far away is throwing a fit about God-knows but—

But.

Gerard’s mouth is warm and soft as velvet, the hand on the back of Frank’s neck grounding, and if there’s one cliché that’s true, it’s that Frank wants to stay right here in this moment forever.

But it ends, as all good things do, because Frank steps off the curb into a pile of slush and almost loses his footing.

Gerard grabs him by the arms. “Whoa. You okay?” He’s smiling and his eyes are sparkling with the reflection of the light show that’s still going on without them.

Frank shakes out his foot. His heart is beating it’s own Christmas tune, like that one scene in _The Santa Clause._ “Yeah, yeah.”

“You two ready to go?” Mikey asks loudly. “Ray needs drugs.”

“I need my fix,” Ray agrees.

Frank expected Gerard to let go of him, but he just puts a hand on his shoulder and walks him across the street to the car. Sitting in the backseat together, Gerard reaches across the space between them and takes Frank’s hand like they’re teenagers sneaking around while Mikey and Ray debate whether or not _Die Hard_ can be considered a Christmas movie. They stay like that the whole way home.

  
  


Back at the cottage, when everyone’s in a warm pair of pajamas and their shoes are lined up in front of the fireplace to dry, Ray pops a couple of his painkillers and conks out in the recliner with Mikey in his lap and _That ‘70s Show_ playing on his laptop. Frank goes into the kitchen to make hot chocolate as quiet as possible and Gerard feeds Mitch pieces of cold rotisserie chicken from the fridge. Mikey is asleep too when they pass through the living room, and with an unspoken agreement they head upstairs.

Mitch makes it into Frank’s room before them and he’s waiting at the foot of the bed with his swishing tail and expectant eyes. Frank sets his hot chocolate on the nightstand and Gerard does too. When he’s pulling his laptop out of its bag Gerard says, “I’ll be right back,” and tiptoes back downstairs.

Frank’s fingers are tingling in that way he likes, and his belly is warm from something other than the hot chocolate. He opens up the document he was working on and starts to read over what he’s written so far. Gerard comes back just as Frank is starting to type and he sits down on the bed next to him with his art supplies and Frank’s copy of _The Hesitant Alien_ that he took from the desk. Frank hands over his hot chocolate when he motions for it and sets it down on top of the book.

“Hey,” he laughs. “That’s my favorite book.”

“I’ve got a boxful at my apartment,” Gerard says, and kisses him. Mitch interrupts them with a loud, impatient cry, but Frank can’t even be mad at him; Gerard is in his _bed._ “You’re gonna wake the whole neighborhood, you little skutch.”

He scratches Mitch on both cheeks behind his whiskers and his nose wrinkles. “You really love him, huh?” Frank asks, not being able to resist reaching over and petting Mitch too.

“Yeah.” Gerard leans back and props his sketchbook on his bent knees. “I got him when I quit drinking. We’ve been through a lot together.”

“So he’s like an emotional support animal.”

“Yeah, guess so.”

“That’s nice.”

Gerard tucks into his drawing, looking slightly embarrassed. Frank refrains from kissing him again (even though he really wants to) and settles for patting him genially on the knee. Gerard smiles down at his sketchbook. Frank turns back to his document.

A lot of writers say to write what you know, so Frank does. His semi-fictional children’s book author meets a guy while on vacation (a cruise in the summer, since that’s when he’s shooting for his next book to come out), and they spend a week together out at sea. Frank’s not sure of all the details yet, and he’s definitely not sure how it’s going to end, but he knows he wants the outcome, the moral of the story or whatever, to be that they both inspire each other in their own ways.

He soon finishes the thousand word pitch and is working on some notes when he feels a pair of eyes on him that don’t feel like MItch’s. Gerard is looking at him, leaning back against the headboard with his hand poised over his sketchbook in just a way that Frank can’t see what he’s working on.

“What?” he laughs.

“Nice view.” He rolls over presumably to kiss Frank again, but he accidentally knocks over his hot chocolate from its makeshift coaster. “Shit!”

Mitch launches himself off the bed and goes galloping from the room. With a fair amount of swearing and hushed laughter they tear the sheets from the bed and soak up as much of the hot chocolate as they can from the old mattress with a towel from the bathroom. Gerard sneaks downstairs again and comes back with the musty blankets he’d been sleeping with on the couch. He throws them over the bed.

“Sorry about your book,” Gerard says when the comotion has died down and Mitch has snuck back into the room tentatively. He holds _The Hesitant Alien_ up by one stained corner. Frank takes it from him and flips through the book. Thankfully it just looks like the edges got the brunt of the spill.

“That’s fine. I never trust people who try to keep their books in pristine condition anyway.”

“Well—boxful. My place.”

Frank’s not sure if that was a flirtation or not, so he answers by kissing him again, now that there aren’t any drinks left to knock over. That’s something they’re going to have to talk about, and unlike the kiss it has to be sooner rather than later. Because they’re only here until the day after tomorrow, and they live in two different states. But now’s not the time for that conversation, so instead of worrying Frank just kisses him. They kiss until the urge to return to their respective projects becomes too much to ignore and they write and draw until the digital clock on Frank’s computer screen strikes midnight and his phone is buzzing from the nightstand with a call from Brian.

_“Hey, man, Merry Christmas!”_

Gerard is asleep at Frank’s side, sketchbook face down on his stomach and Mitch curled up on the pillow by his head. “Hey, Merry Christmas,” he says into the phone quietly. He shuts his laptop for the night. “What are you up to?”

_“The old lady and I are playing Cards Against Humanity. I’m tipsy. She’s not. The kids are in bed. How’s the writing going?”_

Frank smiles to himself, then turns the smile on Gerard’s peaceful, boyish face that’s turned towards him. “It’s good. It’s really good.”

  
  


“Frank, wake up!” Ray pounds on the bedroom door that Frank is pretty sure was open when he went to sleep. “Frankie!” He pounds again.

Frank presses his face into his pillow. “You’re gonna break your other arm,” he says, though not loud enough for Ray to hear.

And then he remembers Gerard.

He looks over and finds he’s the only one in the bed. It stings only a little bit; it’s not like they _slept_ together. But Frank gets it. He doesn’t really want Ray or Mikey to find them in the same bed together either. He sighs and checks the time on his phone to find it’s just after the crack of dawn. Today is the _day._ Speaking of—when Frank dresses for _the day,_ shaking his head when he catches sight of the dark stain on the bed as he’s making it, he checks to make sure the ring box is still safely tucked in his computer case. It is, nestled in with some old pens and a granola bar wrapper. He pets the pocker. For luck, or something.

Ray is the first person he sees when he heads downstairs with his presents. He’s got his hair pulled back and he’s kneeling under the tree. The floor is already littered with everyone else’s presents. “Got room for mine?”

Ray looks up at Frank and his eyes are wild. He reaches for the bags and boxes Frank’s holding. “Hey, yeah, give me those.” Frank watches him meticulously place everything, turning packages this way and that, like he’s setting up for a photoshoot.

“Babe, quit messing with that shit and come have breakfast,” MIkey calls from the kitchen.

Ray sighs and pulls himself to his feet with a hand on Frank’s belt. “Mom said they’ll be here by two,” he tells Frank like they’re conspiring.

“That’s plenty of time until you have to freak out, man.”

Ray looks at him like he’s lost his mind as they step into the kitchen. Frank reaches up to brush his fingers along the mistletoe hanging from the doorway. “I’ve been freaking out since last _week,_ and I won’t be able to chill out until everyone is on their way home with leftovers.”

It looks like a bomb went off in the kitchen; every concievable inch of counterspace is covered in bags of vegetables and cannisters of frozen dough and things that need thawing. Mikey is icing a tray of cinnamon rolls over at the breakfast nook, which seems to be the only spot in the whole room that’s untouched by the chaos. And Gerard’s not here.

“Morning, Frankie! Grab a paper plate, Ray’s not letting us use the china.”

Frank pours himself some coffee and sits. “Where’s Gerard at?” he asks, trying to sound as casual as possible. For a terrifying moment Frank thinks maybe he left, but then he remembers seeing his bags in the living room still and tells himself to calm down.

“He called an Uber before you got up,” Ray tells him, rummaging through one of the drawers one-handed. “I think he said he wanted to grab some scratch-offs.”

“No, _you_ asked him for scratch-offs,” Mikey says, sucking icing from his thumb. “He didn’t say where he was going.”

Ray stops his rummaging. “Oh, right. I gamble when I’m nervous.”

“We know,” Frank laughs. Him and Mikey touch their warm cinnamon rolls together in a cheers and stuff them in their mouths. Last year when Ray was waiting for the results of a photography contest he entered he spent over a hundred bucks on scratch-offs from Rite-Aid (he won less than half of it back).

“Ray, sit. Jesus Christ, you’re giving me anxiety.”

Ray whines and continues doing whatever it is he’s doing, which looks like a whole lot of nothing. “I have to start cooking. The ham isn’t even in yet.”

Mikey goes over. “No, _we_ have to start cooking. But _we_ want to eat first, so come on.” He drags Ray over and pushes him down across from Frank. He winces. “Did you take your painkiller?”

Ray avoids Mikey’s very parental gaze and reaches over to grab a cinnamon roll, the one that’s the most saturated with icing. “They make me sleepy. I need to be—I wanna be awake.” He gives Frank a conspicuous smile, who in turn nudges his foot in acknowledgement.

Mikey has nothing to say to that, squeezes in next to Ray and takes another cinnamon roll. As Frank eats and drinks and watches Mitch skulk around the kitchen looking for scraps, he wonders if either of them bore witness to the kiss he and Gerard shared last night at the parade-thing. If they did they’re being uncharacteristically cool about it. But if they didn’t—Frank wonders if he should tell them. It is Mikey’s previously estranged brother after all.

Gerard returns before the tray of cinnamon rolls is gone, and steals one for himself after dropping a stack of scratch-offs onto the table. Ray gasps and pulls a quarter out a thin air like a magician. Gerard is quiet and stoic as he stands eating over the island in his long coat with Mitch laying claim to his ankles, and he curiously won’t look at Frank.

“Merry Christmas,” he says while Ray and Mikey are preoccupied with their lottery tickets, getting shavings all over the table. He gulps down the last dregs of his coffee.

Gerard smiles, tight-lipped, but he still doesn’t look over, keeping his eyes trained on his cinnamon roll. “Merry Christmas.”

Now, Ray and Mikey have no reason to be concerned over Gerard’s suddenly strange behavior, but Frank does. They _kissed_ last night. Multiple times.

Was he regretting it? Is he thinking of a way to let Frank down lightly? Did he completely misread the whole situation and his stupid writer’s brain fabricated the whole thing?

“What can I do to help?” Gerard asks, dusting his hands off.

Ray looks up. “Finally, someone who’s ready to work! Start peeling the potatoes.”

Gerard salutes and goes to hang his coat up at the front door. Frank doesn’t think he imagined it all. He really doesn’t.

  
  


Frank must have gone into some self-induced coma, because he comes back to himself two hours later elbow-deep in a bowl of cookie dough with someone knocking incessantly at the front door. The knock is as heavy-handed as Ray’s, so that could only mean one thing.

“My family,” Ray says, horrified. He hurries out of the kitchen. “They’re early!”

Frank glances at the time on the microwave and sees that yes, they’re almost three hours early. Mikey downs the rest of his wine (since the holidays always mean day drinking) just as the Toro family bursts into the cottage in a cacophony of noise.

“Another Christmas in the trenches,” he jokes, but Mikey is the only to laugh. Gerard is apparently too preoccupied spooning juice over the ham in the oven.

There hasn’t been any semi-accidental touches or stolen glances, despite the four of them running around this very average-sized kitchen all morning like a bunch of chickens with their heads chopped off, but it’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Ray’s mom is the first one to barge into the kitchen. She’s dressed like she’s going to mass in 1983 and is wearing enough perfume to choke a horse. “Where’s my other son!” she cries, heading straight for Mikey with outstretched arms.

She’s a small woman, and Mikey is a beanpole, so he has to bend down to hug her. “Hey, mom.”

“Mom!” She pulls back, her hands on his hips. “When are you two getting married?”

Mikey goes redder than Frank’s ever seen him, and he shares a look with his brother, who in turn shares it with Frank, who starts to feel a little bit better, just like that. Just because Gerard looked at him. “I—”

“You’re so skinny.” Mrs. Toro pats Mikey’s stomach, then pats his face. “You need some meat on your bones, like my Ray.” She says this every time they see her, and it always makes them laugh. Ray’s mother has never understood the concept of a fast metabolism. “And you’re wearing glasses!”

“I didn’t put my contacts in yet—”

“I like you better in glasses. Makes you look handsome.” She turns to Frank. “Frankie, sweetheart! I recommended your book to a girlfriend of mine whose son is just starting high school because she told me that he told her that he’s a _pansexual._ I’m not sure what that is but I know it’s not heterosexual!” Now it’s Frank’s turn to go red in the face, and he laughs awkwardly as she hugs him.

“It’s good to see you, Mrs. Toro.”

“Oh, _Mrs. Toro._ That’s my mother-in-law.” She fiddles with the front of Frank’s shirt, fixing it even though it doesn’t need to be fixed, then her eyes land on something over Frank’s shoulder. “Am I seeing double? You look just like my Michael!”

They both turn to Gerard, who’s standing by the oven like a deer in the headlights. “Uh, I’m his brother. Gerard, ma’am.”

“Oh, thank the Lord. I thought all that Florida sunshine was finally getting to me! Come here, I’ve been waiting to meet you for years.”

Gerard goes to her, if tentatively. “Really?”

She hugs him too, just as warmly as she did them. “Yes!” she says into his neck. “My Raymond mentioned to me once that Michael has an older brother in the city, but I was always too polite to say anything!”

 _“Ray,”_ Mikey says, shaking his head. “Do you want to help finish cooking, Mom?”

“That’s just the reason I’m here early,” Mrs. Toro rolls up her sleeves. “I knew something was wrong, I could feel it in my bones. I wasn’t even surprised when I saw Ray’s arm in that sling!”

“He didn’t tell you we went to the hospital?”

“He didn’t have to,” she smiles.

“Boys, come on out!” calls the booming voice of Ray’s dad, and they all head out into the living room like they’re little kids again, leaving Mrs. Toro to work her magic.

Both of Ray’s brothers brought their wives, and between them they have five children between the ages of seven years and seven months, the oldest of which has poor Mitch in a death grip. Frank can almost sense the urgency he knows Gerard is feeling to rescue his cat. The pile of presents under the tree has grown exponentially, and one of the kids is rooting through them.

“Sam, get out of there,” scolds her mother, and she shoves the baby into Frank’s arms so she can go and extricate her daughter.

The baby, Gene, stares at Frank with huge brown eyes. “Hey, buddy,” Frank says, his voice automatically going up an octave. “Merry first Christmas.” Gene makes a noise and grabs Frank’s nose.

Mikey and Ray are getting their cheeks kissed and their backs slapped as the other kids run circles around their legs. Gerard’s eyes find Frank’s through the chaos and Frank smiles. He smiles back, but it looks like it’s more to the baby on Frank’s hip than to him. That annoying worry starts up again in his belly, and all he wants to do is drag Gerard upstairs or outside and say, “What did I do wrong?” (Because he’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.) But he never gets the chance to.

Ray’s mom is in charge of the cooking indefinitely now, and every now and then she’ll come out with a spoon held over her hand and ask one of them to be a taste tester. Ray stays with her as second-in-command, and Mikey floats in and out with his glass of wine. Baby Gene gets passed around from lap to lap while they talk and play dusty board games that one of Ray’s brothers brought down from upstairs. The kids stand on the fireplace hearth in their adorable little outfits and sing their favorite Christmas songs, and all in all it’s a good time, like it usually is with the Toro family. The only difference is Gerard, who’s lingering at the peripheral of Frank’s vision like Marley’s ghost, as quiet and brooding as the day they met. It makes it a little hard to concentrate on the festivities, and that makes Frank sort of hate him a bit. This is just what he was worried would happen, but for Ray, not him.

Lunch, as it usually is on Christmas, is virtually nonexistent. They all snack on various hors d'oeuvre (baby carrots, celery, shrimp etc.) and various dips (mostly ranch and hummus), and play more games with the kids to keep them from climbing the walls. At one point Mikey puts his glass of wine down long enough to try and teach them how to play solitaire, but they get frustrated easily, so they end up just making a house of cards instead.

Gerard manages to keep out of most of the conversation, roaming the room like a sentry with his eggnog and only answering the questions that are directed at him. By the time Ray starts hoarding everyone into the dining room for dinner, it’s easy to pretend he’s not even here at all. Ray still doesn’t notice, thankfully, but Frank does. He couldn’t ignore Gerard even if he tried, especially now. When they’re all holding hands to say grace, Gerard’s like a stone in Frank’s, he sneaks a glance at him while everyone’s eyes are closed. Gerard is mouthing along silently, lips shaping the words and making Frank want to run to the nearest church and dunk his head in a font of holy water. Frank looks away when his eyes open, but he doesn’t miss the way Gerard takes his hand back before they’re even blessing themselves. _What did I do?_

Frank always considered him the type of person who doesn’t really take things to heart, but apparently not, because halfway through dinner he has to get up and leave the room; being elbow to elbow with Gerard right now is just too much for him. He jokingly tells Mrs. Toro he’s going out for a smoke and slips away while Ray is reassuring her that he’s just being funny. He heads for the front door but thinks against it, instead sitting on the couch next to the pile of purses and backpacks. Mitch is there, happy to have a few moments of peace while the kids are preoccupied with their food. Frank scratches his head, and his eyes land on the little sprig of mistletoe hanging from the kitchen doorway. While he stares at it, listening to the wind through the walls and the chatter from the other room, Frank is just naive enough to think maybe Gerard will come find him, like Frank has done so many times, but he doesn’t, and he rejoins dinner without an adiquette excuse of where he went. Luckily everyone is too preoccupied with each other and their food to notice him. He can feel Gerard’s eyes on him as he spoons some more stuffing onto his plate, but he doesn’t give him the luxury of having been caught.

After desert, when everyone’s replaced the wine and hard cider with coffee and cocoa, Ray announces it’s finally time to open presents, and the kids practically knock the tree over in their haste to pass everything out. Mitch bolts up the stairs, and Frank is really starting to feel for him.

Half an hour and fifty pounds of wrapping later, the sun long gone and everyone sleepy, one of Ray’s nephews pulls his last present from its bag, and it’s _The Paper Kingdom._ His siblings and cousins all gasp like he unearthed the Holy Grail, and he holds the book up for everyone to see. “Just what I wanted!”

“Hold on—” His dad takes the book from him and squints at the back cover. He hands it to his wife. “Is that—?”

She looks at the cover too, then looks at Gerard. Her face breaks out in a smile. “I knew you looked familiar!” There’s a chorus of _What?_ and she says, “Mike’s brother wrote this.”

“Uncle Mikey’s brother wrote my favorite book?” asks Livvy, like she can’t believe her eyes or ears.

A dozen faces turn on Gerard leaning up against the banister. He does bright red. “Oh, uh, yeah. That was me.”

“Another writer!” cries Mrs. Toro. She hits her husband on the arm and Ray’s dad snorts himself awake. “You hear that?”

“If you wrote this, then why do you look different?” asks one of the littler ones. She’s staring at Gerard’s picture on the back of the book.

“He got old.”

“No, he dyed his _hair.”_

“Guys, come on, be nice.”

Livvy takes the book and goes up to Gerard. “Can you read it to us?”

Frank holds his breath at the interaction, and he knows Mikey and Ray probably are too. With the way he’s been acting all day, Frank is afraid he’s going to treat Livvy the same way he treated that girl at the restaurant, but he just takes the book from her little hands and smiles.

“Sure,” he says, and four tiny voices cheer in glee. He gets comfortable in the middle of the floor, and all the kids circle around him with their gap-toothed grins and rosy cheeks. _“Rosalind, or Rosie, as her friends called her,”_ he starts, _“was a mighty girl of ten. She had knees that were always scraped and pockets always full, and an imagination too big for her own good. This is the story of her greatest adventure yet…”_

Everyone seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief as Gerard reads, his slightly nasally voice lulling them all into a post-Christmas calm. Bodies melt into cushions, eyes flutter closed. But something different happens to Frank. He feels himself waking up, leaning into that melodic voice like a sailor to a siren, until he too is sitting on the old carpet with his legs crossed. Small bodies crawl into his lap and nestle their way under his arms and Frank is in love. He’s in love, as simple and as complicated as that.

He knows those feelings, the warning signs, like the back of his own hand from years of writing and reading about them. But is it possible to fall in love with someone when a week ago you didn’t even really know they existed?

No, that’s not true. Frank thinks he fell in love with G.A. Way a long time ago, he’s just now falling in love with _Gerard._ And thinking over the last week, the days flitting through Frank’s mind like a View-Master, he’s almost sure Gerard feels the same way (if the kissing wasn’t proof enough), and he’s acting oddly today because the holidays are just hard for him. Frank forgot about that, the fact that his life was turned outside down one Christmas five years ago, so that has to be it. He was worrying over nothing. When Ray (or Mikey) finally pops the question sometime later, in the ensuing euphoria Frank will pull Gerard under that sad little sprig of mistletoe and kiss him like he did last night. Then later, or even tomorrow, they’ll talk about the after.

Gerard is just about to start on chapter three when there’s a commotion on the stairs and something that sounds suspiciously like a small piece of jewelry is clattering to the floor at the foot. Every head turns to the noise and is met with Mitch’s huge yellow eyes, who meows loudly when he sees he has an audience. Gerard is the first one up, then Ray.

“What did it get?” Mrs. Toro asks curiously, craning her neck to see.

“Oh, just—” Frank sees Gerard put the ring back in its box and hand it to Ray. He comes over to where Mikey is still lounging on the recliner with his flushed cheeks and glassy eyes from all the wine he’s had. But he sobers up the second Ray is on one knee in front of him. Mrs. Toro screams. Mr. Toro snorts himself awake. “Mikey—”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

Ray stops short. He looks startled, but tries to continue anyway. “The day I first met you—”

“No, shut the fuck up.” Mikey is digging in his pockets now. The kids all let out a scandalized gasp at Uncle Mikey’s use of profanity. He pulls out his own small box and Mrs. Toro sounds like she’s about to have a heart attack. _“I_ was going to propose!”

Even from where he’s sitting Frank can see Ray's mouth drop. “No way.”

 _“Yes_ way, I had a whole speech prepared—”

“Me too—!”

“But now you _ruined_ it—”

 _“Fuck_ your speech.” Ray gets up and kisses Mikey like he’ll die if he doesn’t, and one of his brothers yells.

“Hey, hey, no one asked the question yet!”

The whole room agrees.

They pull away. smiling like a couple of loons. “Fuck your speech too,” Mikey says, opening his ring box. “Wanna get hitched?”

“You better not,” Mrs. Toro says faintly from behind her hands.

Ray lets Mikey push the ring into his fourth finger. “Yeah, you?”

“Hell yeah.”

Mikey gets his ring in too and they kiss again. The room erupts in cheers and applause and even though Frank doesn’t get up to do the same to Gerard, Gerard smiles at him for the first time all day, and that’s just as good.

The night winds up very fast after that. Food is put away, tables cleaned, dishes stuffed into the ancient dishwasher to be forgotten about until the morning. The kids start dropping like flies, their little bodies unable to handle any more excitement for the day, and they’re splayed on the couch like dolls surrounded by their goodies and covered up with their parents’ jackets. Mitch schmoozes for leftovers, the garbage overflows since no one wants to take it out in this weather, Frank Sinatra croons away from Ray’s new record player followed by Ella Fitzgerald, then Tony Bennett, the Bing. They work, though half-assed as it may be, like dwarves until the cottage is _good enough._ Christmas might as well be a Sunday, and everyone knows no work is to be done on the Lord’s day.

When the dads are carrying the presents to the car and the moms are throwing kids over their shoulders, Mrs. Toro comes over to Ray with baby Gene in her arms all bundled up and ready to go. She stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. Instead of thanking him or congratulating him again she says, “We’re selling the cottage.”

“What?” Ray asks with a confused smile.

“Why’d you think I let you have it for Christmas?”

“Because you trust me?”

Mrs. Toro laughs and kisses him again. “Nobody comes up here anymore, baby. It’s too much of a hassle. I’m hoping of getting rid of it by New Years.”

That bums everyone out a little, but Mrs. Toro doesn’t notice, just kisses everyone and waves baby Gene’s fat little hand and follows the rest of her family outside with the promise that they’ll see them in the morning.

“Well,” Mikey says when they all come back in from waving the charge off into the night. Frank’s ears are ringing from the sudden silence. “Who’s ready for bed?”

“I can’t believe they’re selling it!” Ray whines. “They bought this place before I was even born!”

“Let’s not worry about that now.” Mikey steers him in the direction of the stairs. “There’s some Tylenol with your name on it.”

Frank and Gerard watch them go up, and when the bedroom door shuts Frank has a million things teetering on the tip of his tongue but Gerard just starts upstairs silently. Frank follows after him, his heart in his throat. But Gerard doesn’t sit down on the bed, or turn to Frank with his expressive eyes. He heads straight for his luggage that’s sitting in the corner that he must have brought up here sometime before Ray's family arrived.

“What are you doing?”

Gerard doesn’t look at him. “I’m staying at a motel.”

Frank’s stomach drops. “What? Why? I don’t mind you—”

“I got an earlier flight.” Gerard faces him, his bags over his shoulders. “I leave in the morning.” He looks a million miles away.

Everything Frank convinced himself of comes crashing back down around him. He’s leaving, and from the vacant look in his eyes and the way he’s been acting all day, Frank knows it’s not just the holidays. It’s him. Childishly, defiantly, he wants to say, “But you smiled at me!”

Gerard breezes past him and Frank follows him down the stairs. “What did I do?” he asks, almost desperately.

Mitch comes running over and Gerard scoops him up and puts him in his carrier. “Nothing.”

Frank follows him into the kitchen where he collects the cat food from the cabinet. “Bullshit. You’ve been giving me the cold shoulder all day.” Gerard doesn’t answer, and Frank watches him pack up his small share of presents from the coffee table. When he’s putting his coat on, Frank grabs the front of it. “Gerard, please.” He doesn’t even care if he sounds like he’s begging. He knows the moment Gerard walks out that door he’s never going to see him again, and he deserves to at least know what went wrong. “You’re away from your family, you’re away from your ex—you don’t have to keep pushing people away.” Gerard clenches his jaw and looks away. Frank lets go of his coat and summons up some of the confidence he fabricates on paper. “You don’t have to be scared anymore, you know?”

For a brief moment Frank thinks he got through to him, but then Gerard hoists his bags from the floor and says harshly, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re just like Mikey.”

Frank stands there like he just got backhanded. When Gerard has one foot over the threshold he finds his voice again. “You’re an _asshole.”_

Gerard shuts the door without looking back. Frank bites back a frustrated scream for the sake of his best friends, then finally heads upstairs.

  
  


Frank decides to stay in bed the next morning until he starts to feel guilty. When he goes downstairs it looks like Ray and Mikey got up earlier than Frank knew, because the kitchen is spotless and most of the decorations are already torn down and put away.

Mike shoves a cup of coffee into his hands when he sees him. “Hey. Where’s Gerard?”

It hits Frank then that they both know, and he wants nothing more than to go outside and yell into the forest until it causes an avalanche. “He left.”

How could he be so stupid? So goddamn naive? He’s thirty years old and he let himself believe he could have a fairytale ending with someone like G.A. Way. He’s been in the business long enough to know that not every story has to have a happy ending.

“What do you mean he left?”

Frank shakes his head and drinks his coffee. “He stayed the night in a motel. He told me he got an early flight this morning.” He vaguely wonders when that flight was.

Mikey shares a look with Ray. Ray says cautiously, “Did something happen?”

Frank can’t help the bitter laugh that bubbles up past his lips. “Not that I know of.”

Mikey sighs and slaps his hand down on the counter. “Dammit, Gerard.”

“You have to go catch him!” Ray says from his spot at the breakfast nook. His face is as bright as the engagement ring twinkling from his hand. “His plane might not have taken off yet! Do you want to call him? I think I still have his number saved in my phone.”

“This isn’t a Hallmark movie,” Frank says, his throat right. He suddenly misses home, and wants nothing more than to leave. “You know what?” He sets his coffee down. “I’m gonna go.”

“To the air—”

“Home.”

“What?” they both say at the same time. Ray gets up from the table. “We’ll come with you—”

“No, you’re going sledding with your family later. I just want to… I wanna go home.”

They stare at him with sad, concerned eyes. Mikey says, “I’ll call you a cab.”

  
  


Frank gets home around lunchtime and his apartment is cold and dark and smells kind of musty, despite the fact that it’s only been shut up for a week. The tinsel he hung up is on the floor, and his tabletop tree next to the TV looks as sad as anything. With a sigh he drops his bags to the floor and steps into the kitchenette. He tried to clean his fridge out best he could before they hit the road, so there’s not much left waiting for him when he opens it up. He ends up making frozen mac and cheese for lunch, and eats it on the couch staring at the darkened TV screen.

When he’s finished eating, he pulls his laptop from its case and powers it up. He doesn’t have the energy to unpack or do much of anything right now, but this is something he needs to do, for the sake of his sanity. He opens up the finished pitch and promptly throws it in the trash. He spends the rest of the afternoon browsing old WIPs, trying to find something he can polish up by New Years. He settles on some old story about a high school janitor that discovers a haunted… Whatever. A haunted whatever. He recruits some students to help him and Frank will figure out the rest later. He works in it until Ray and Mikey come home; he can hear their familiar commotion out in the hall and opens his door to welcome them home.

“Frankie!” Ray says as he throws one of their bags into their apartment. They’re rosy-cheeked and disheveled, and Mikey is carrying a plastic bag that has to contain leftovers.

“Gabbie lost a tooth,” he tells him, carrying the bag in. When he comes back he says, “Wish you were there, man.”

“Me too.” He feels like such a dick just disappearing like that. He was looking forward to spending time with Ray’s family. He was also looking forward to spending time with Gerard, and now look where he’s at.

“Ray wouldn't give me Gerard’s number.” Mikey must remember the _Evil Dead_ magnet the same time Frank does, because he turns and runs into the apartment, and Ray follows after him yelling “No!”

Frank loves his best friends, but he’s not sure he can deal with them right now.

Maybe he should get a cat.

  
  


The next five days are a post-holiday haze of canned soup, shitty television, and wandering the apartment like a restless ghost. Ray and Mikey are in the honeymoon phase of their engagement, so while they care about Frank, they’re too consumed by their euphoria to notice anyone or anything outside their own little bubble. That’s fine though, Frank can’t blame them. He’s not so sure he really wants to see anyone anyway.

(The fact he feels so down in the dumps over something that wasn’t even a relationship should be concerning, but he’s not thinking about it. It’s the possibility he’s really heartbroken over anyway.)

(But he’s not thinking about that either.)

He sends his new pitch to Brian the morning of New Years Eve while he’s swallowing some cereal, and Brian gives him a call just as he’s about to hop in the shower.

_“I hate it.”_

“What?” Frank says to his own reflection.

_“The story sucks, dude. It’s boring. I thought you were trying to branch out of this kiddie shit?”_

Frank sighs and hangs his head, shivering since he’s standing on freezing tile buck-naked. “I changed my mind, I guess. I’ll come up with something else and get back to you later.”

_“No, hey, what happened to the one you were working on on your vacation?”_

“How’d you know about that?”

 _“Did you forget I have access to your Google Drive? That was_ good, _Frank. I can really see people enjoying it.”_

Frank sighs again. “I didn’t like that one,” he tells him. “I’ll talk to you later.” And he hangs up.

Ray and Mikey are on his couch when he gets out of the shower.

“Are you two finally getting sick of each other?” Frank asks, going into his room to change.

“Yeah, we’re calling off the wedding,” Ray calls, and quieter, to Mikey, _“Wedding.”_

Mikey says back, just as excitedly, “I know.”

They’re still there when Frank comes out. He expected nothing less, honestly. “What are you guys doing here?” He didn’t give it much thought before, but seeing those gold and silver bands around their fingers is making Frank realize how hopelessly single he is. He can’t even remember when his last proper relationship was.

Ray puts his hand on Mikey’s leg like he can read his thoughts and wants to torture him further. “We’re tired of seeing you mope.”

“I don’t know how you two even managed to notice.” He didn’t mean for it to come out sounding like a jab, but luckily Mikey ignores him entirely.

“Gerard’s not going to call you, man. He never takes initiative on anything.”

Or maybe Mikey wasn’t ignoring him; that sounded just as snarky. “Gee, thanks, Mike,” he deadpans.

“No, listen—” He sighs. “I know— _now_ that my brother never got to choose many things for himself, but he chose _you,_ Frank. He just doesn’t know what to do with you, because you’re not a book he wrote or whatever. He just— All you have to do is go see him, okay? Don’t make the same mistake I did.”

Frank stares at a spot over their heads, his brain a repetition of _he chose you he chose you he chose you._ “But what if it’s my fault? He barely even talked to me before he left.”

“It wasn’t. Gerard is good at running away.” Ray smacks him. “What? It’s not an insult, just an observation.”

While Frank is still staring at the wall, Ray and Mikey get up off the couch. On their way out, Ray sticks something to the fridge. Frank doesn’t do anything about it at first. He goes and blow dries his hair. He watches three episodes of _The Great British Baking Show._ He eats some lunch. And then he looks at whatever Ray left him.

It’s Gerard’s phone number, stuck under an Oscar Wilde magnet.

If Gerard’s not going to take the first step, then Frank will (because as much as he doesn’t get along with his parents, they definitely taught him a thing or two). So he sits down on the couch and calls. The phone rings until an automated voice tells him the voicemail is full. He calls again and gets the same results.

Refusing to get discouraged (Gerard _chose_ him, and plus—this is the most motivated he’s felt all week), Frank fishes his pitch out of the trash, gives it a good once over, and sends it off to Brian.

Brian calls him back almost immediately, and Frank hates to admit how hard his heart started beating when his phone went off. _“Had a change of heart?”_

“Something like that,” Frank says. “Hey— On a completely unrelated note, do you have G.A. Way’s address?”

_“Oh, hell yeah, are you finally going to his NYE party?”_

Oh God, Frank forgot all about that. But, it could actually work to his advantage. Being alone with Gerard was overwhelming enough without whatever this is going on between them. “Uh, yeah. What time does it start? I don’t need, like, an invitation, right?”

Frank’s not really sure why he asked that, because invitation or not Gerard is Gatsby and Frank is just one of the many hungry residents of Long Island.

Hopefully this particular story ends with the green light though, because he’s starting to reach for it.

 _“No, you can just head over there, he’s got enough space.”_ Frank almost laughs. _“It usually starts around ten, I think. I went once and I didn’t get home until almost four in the morning. My wife almost killed me because we were having brunch with her boss that day.”_

Ten. Alright. Frank can work with that. “Thanks, Bri. I’ll tell him you said hi.” He probably won’t do that.

 _“Sure, yeah. And hey—_ have fun. _You’ve been working yourself to death trying to come up with this next book. I bet you spent your whole week in the mountains holed up.”_

“Well you were pretty on my ass about getting it to you.”

_“That’s my job, Frankie boy. Now go party it up before I have to start getting on you about finishing the damn thing. Kiss a beautiful woman when the ball drops! Or man— Or someone. Whatever, you got a pen?”_

Frank scrambles for something to write with and flips over the scrap of paper with Gerard’s number on it. “Go ahead.”

Brian gives him the address in New York and Frank records it as neatly as possible so he doesn’t embarrass himself having to call him back because he can’t read his own handwriting. He hangs up, and the time on his phone tells him it’s not even one. He can hang around for the next nine hours. He’s been doing it since he got back from the Poconos, right?

He decides to clean the apartment, because God knows he hasn’t done it in a while; his sad little Charlie Brown Christmas tree is still up. He dusts and wipes the tables down and even reorganizes his bookshelf by color like Gerard is coming here tonight and not vice versa. But who knows, if both of them get their shit together he could very well come over here.

When Frank gets into his room, after he’s made his bed and thrown all the dirty laundry into the hamper, he finds _The Hesitant Alien_ on the floor half hidden by his rug. Frank picks it up and runs his thumb over the stained, warped edges. He fans the pages and something falls out. It’s a piece of paper, and as he picks it up he remembers Gizmo. But there’s another piece of paper behind it, a larger one, and as he moves Gizmo out of the way (and the fifty dollar bill that makes Frank laugh), he’s met with a picture of himself. It’s a drawing of himself from the side, face twisted in a familiar look of concentration and hands poised over his laptop. It’s colored to look like the panel of a comic book, all bright like pop art.

_He chose you._

Frank flips it over and on the back, written in a heat hand, is _A writer who enjoys his craft._

Frank tucks them both back into his book and opens his closet. He goes into the cardboard box tucked towards the back and pulls out a copy of _Stomachaches_ and _Stereo._ He puts them in his bag, along with his phone and his wallet. And _Hesitant Alien,_ for luck.

He watches some more _British Baking Show,_ chewing nervously at his nails. He orders takeout for dinner and tries to pawn the leftovers off to his friends across the hall but finds they’re both out. Right, they both have jobs. Frank does too, he’s just taking some time off to pine after a guy he just met.

The sun is going down and Frank is getting restless. Why doesn’t he just go now? Hop in the car and get it over with? He could—he almost does, but he doesn’t really want to be in Gerard’s huge NYC apartment all by himself. Sometimes crowds are good. Sometimes crowds are safer.

Finally, after checking the time what has to be every five minutes, it’s nearing ten o’clock. Frank fixes himself up, grabs his bag, and leaves the apartment. The door across from him opens when he’s locking his, and Mikey peeks his head out.

“Hey, man, do you mind driving me to the shop real quick?” he says. “A delivery got dropped off early and I don’t want to leave it outside until morning.”

“Where’s Ray?”

Mikey waves a hand. “He’s doing a nighttime shoot for some cosplayers. Are you heading out?”

“Uh, yeah. Come on.”

They get to the comic shop just as it hits ten, and Frank waits in the car while Mikey grabs a box from the stoop and brings it in. He doesn’t ask where Frank’s going on their way back, but he doesn’t have to. He just says, “See you later!” with a shit-eating grin and waves him off.

Frank is driving for just a few minutes, about to put the pedal to the metal to reach the city, when his phone rings. He digs it out of his bag and answers it at a red light even though he knows it’s probably not Gerard. “Hello?”

 _“Hey, Frankie,”_ Ray. _“My damn battery died. Do you mind coming and giving me a jump?”_

Frank checks the time. He loves his friends, he really does, but sometimes he hates them. He also hates his apparent inability to never say no to them. “Sure, man, where you at?”

_“I’m over on, uh, Snover. Behind that dilapidated barn. Remember the one Mikey got tetanus at?”_

Of course Frank remembers—it’s in the opposite direction that he’s going in. He makes a U-turn in someone’s driveway. “Why can’t one of the cosplayers give you a jump?”

 _“They all left right after the shoot because they wanted to go walk around Target dressed like_ Supernatural _characters before they closed.”_

“Ah. Okay, well, I’ll be there in a sec. Try not to freeze.”

Ray is standing next but to his car when Frank pulls into the grassy lot, and he waves him over. Frank hops out and grabs his jumper cables from his trunk. “Thank, dude,” Ray says, flipping open his hood carefully. “I really didn’t feel like calling Triple A at this hour.”

“No problem,” Frank says, and tries to make it sound believable. He hooks their cars up and tries to ignore the beating of his own heart and the looming silhouette of the old barn at his periphery. “So how was the shoot? Go on and start her up.”

Ray hops into the car and starts it. “It was cool, they all had their own props.”

“How’d you do it with one hand?” He’s barely seen his friends since they all got back from the Poconos, so the least he could do is make some small talk before he runs off.

“Very carefully,” Ray laughs. They wait a few minutes and he turns the ignition. It starts on the third try. “Thanks, man, I owe you one.”

“No problem,” he says again. He unhooks the jumper cables and throws them back into his trunk. “Can you get home okay?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine.” Ray shuts their hoods. “Are you going somewhere?”

Frank feels himself blush despite the chill in the air. “Uh, just. You know.”

He’s smiling, the asshole. “I don’t know. Are you heading into the city by chance?”

“Bye!” Frank hops into his car and flips him the bird. Ray laughs while he disappears into his rear view mirror.

It’s after ten-thirty already when he gets on the road again, and he finally puts the pedal to the metal. Until, of course, he hits a hell of a lot of traffic. _New Years._ God, he’s the stupidest lovestruck idiot on the planet. He swears in his head and out loud while he’s stuck in this bumper-to-bumper nightmare. It moves at a snail's pace, and Frank wants to scream. This is his airport moment!

He manages not to lose his mind through all the incessant beeping and shouting and people trying to sneak in front of him when there’s absolutely no room, but he definitely feels strung as right as a violin as he pulls onto the street Gerard lives on.

He reaches the skyscraper-esque apartment building at almost a quarter to twelve, and pushes through the crowded lobby to the elevators without even taking a second to admire how grand the place is. The moment he finally takes to catch his breath comes on his way up to Gerard’s floor. He shakes out his tingling, sweating hands, reties his shoes for no reason, and fixes his hair in his reflection on the doors. They decide to open then, and he’s met with a group of very attractive women in short dresses looking like a fool. He smiles and hurries past them.

The pounding, muffled music helps guide Frank down the hallway better than the apartment number written on the piece of paper in his hand, and it matches the erratic bearing of his heart. When he reaches Gerard’s apartment, he knocks on the door and it opens before he can even start to panic. Two guys in shirts open all the way and glitter under their eyes burst out.

“Oh my God, babe, Molly downstairs has a _champagne fountain,”_ one of them says, but Frank isn’t sure if he’s talking to him or his partner.

When they’re well down the hallway, Frank takes a deep breath and pushes in.

To say Gerard’s apartment is big would be an understatement. The place is huge and modern and absolutely filled to the brim with bodies. A bad remix of Madonna’s _Like a Prayer_ makes Frank’s blood jump in his veins as he pushes through people dancing and drinking and sticking their tongues down each other’s throats. He eventually finds the living room, and way on the far wall the flat screen TV—big enough to make even Ray Bradbury nervous—is playing the Ball Drop, once again hosted by Ryan Seacrest.

Some girl in a white suit tries to push a glass of champagne into his hand and he declines, but not before grabbing her by the elbow and saying, “Have you seen Gerard?”

She makes a face like she’s never heard that name before in her life, and Frank figures if people just drift into these parties like dust in the wind then she probably hasn’t, but then she surprises him by saying, “I think he’s on the balcony.”

Frank thanks her and heads in the direction she points. He almost doesn’t recognize Gerard at first, since he’s the only one out here and he’s _smoking._ It’s dark and cold and not much quieter than inside, but Frank is so glad he’s here.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

Gerard turns, and his eyes go wide. “Frank.” Frank smiles. The cigarette smolders away between his spread fingers and he throws it over the railing. “It’s better than drinking.”

Frank steps closer. “That’s debatable.”

They’re quiet, and it feels so good to have Gerard’s eyes on him again, looking at him like he can’t believe he’s here. “I was hoping you’d show up.” A beat. “Like Daisy.”

Frank laughs. Even if Gerard doesn’t consider himself a writer anymore, their brains still work in the same way. “You don’t have a pool, do you?”

He looked away for a second, but when he looks back Gerard is frowning. “I’m sorry.”

Frank goes closer, leaning up against the icy railing. He looks down into the bustling traffic below, the crowds and lights. He decides to play dumb, just a little. Just in case. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No—” Gerard steps forward, then thinks against it and stays where he is. “No, Frank, it was all me. I was scared, and you were the best person to take it out on. I’ve never been in love before.” Frank’s heart constricts in his chest, and he wants nothing more than to go over there and kiss him senseless and just forget everything that’s happened. “I made a mistake, and I didn’t know how to fix it.”

“All you had to do was call.” Frank would have called too, honestly. He shouldn’t’ve had to have Mikey tell him.

“I was scared,” Gerard says again.

Frank reaches for his hand. “And you don’t think I am?”

Gerard is about to say something when someone bangs on the sliding glass door. They see everyone crowded around the TV and can hear them chanting the countdown.

“I love you,” Frank says quickly.

Gerard looks like he just got shot. “Me too. But listen—”

“We’ll figure everything else out later,” Frank says, raising his voice as the chanting inside grows louder.

_Five! Four! Three! Two! One!_

Frank pulls him in roughly for a kiss as everyone yells _Happy New Year!_ They kiss while “Auld Lang Syne” plays. They kiss as bright green fireworks burst out in the distance like flashbulbs.

They pull away, and Gerard’s eyes are still closed, and his mouth still puckered slightly like he’s trying to savor the moment. “I bought the cottage.”

Frank drops his hands from his face to the front of his coat. “What?” he says breathlessly.

Gerard opens his eyes. “I bought the cottage back for Mikey and Ray. As a wedding gift. I just didn’t know how to tell them.”

Frank laughs, feeling as light and bubbly as a glass of champagne. “We’ll tell them together.”

He nods, finally smiling too. “Okay.”

“Oh—” Frank let’s go of Gerard so he can swing his bag around to his front. He pulls out the crisp copies of _Stomachaches_ and _Stereo._ “Happy New Year.”

Gerard laughs and takes the books. “Thanks.” Then he grabs the back of Frank’s head and kisses him again. “Happy New Year.”

**Author's Note:**

> constructive criticism is always appreciated <3
> 
> [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydarIing)


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